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Chapters 1-10

i. John Steinbeck grew up in a regular Christian family, as did most of America at the time. However, he did not regularly practice Christianity, but believed in a sort of spirituality related to Christ. From the almost the very beginning of the book, he establishes a retired preacher named Jim Casey. Jim Casey is a direct reference to Jesus Christ, and they both share the same initials. Jim Casey struggles with religion and following the moral codes that he must as a preacher, so he stops preaching and contemplates the meaning of faith. He comes up with a for transcendental version of God. I believe that this connection can tell us a couple of different things about what is going to happen next in this book. One important theme moving forward in this book is probably going to be the clashing of transcendental beliefs and with the established religion of the time, which was Christianity. As Jim Casey has struggled with religion as his economic situation becomes increasingly difficult, I think that the people of the Dust Bowl who migrate will also turn away from religion and build on their transcendental beliefs of self-reliance and self-help. Jesus was also brutally murdered for a crime he did not commit, so I believe that a theme of official injustice and corruption, ending in the death of one of the family memebrs could be a strong possibility in the future. A smaller allusion, yet just as important in the long run is the fact that there are twelve people in the Joad family group. This is an obvious allusion to the twelve disciples. While I do not think that every person has a specific allusion to one of the disciples, I believe that a few characters will live up to their roles. The twelve disciples were also the twelve original followers of Christ, and the word original lands to the idea that later on there may not be twelve people left in the group. there will be many more biblical allusions to come, and this is just the tip of the iceberg coming from one person who has not read the Bible ever before.     Jesus's Life     Twelve Disciples   Steinbeck

Personal Philosophy

Personal Philosophy

“Nobody has ever gotten a scholarship that they did not apply for” - FIRST. While this may seem like just another ploy by an advertising department to lure in students, it has always rung true in my mind. Every year FIRST makes us watch their scholarship video at every robotics regional that we attend, and every year I ignore most of the video. However, I never ignore this one line. It was the only line in that whole video that caught my attention because it held true for so much more than educational scholarships. One thing that I have noticed is that we must seize every opportunity that we can, we cannot wait for God or luck to intervene and get work done for us.

I do not think that there a single person who has ever lived who does not regret missing out on an opportunity. While you may not be able to pinpoint a certain time in your life, I can guarantee that everyone has missed out one at least one opportunity. I know myself that the longer I think about this, the longer the list gets. One regret that I have is not indulging myself in a musical education. When I was in elementary school, my mom made me start going to a cranky old lady to learn how to play the piano. In elementary school, I only played sports, and did not particularly enjoy music. As time progressed, and my laziness fought against the old lady, I was given a convenient excuse to leave, she died. My first teacher died at the age of 92. For years after that, I joined multiple sports teams, clubs, and camps, and developed an interest in math and building. After about 2 years, my mom started to urge me again to try and continue my piano education.

I started taking lessons from another classically-trained old woman in Sunnyvale. This time my teacher was more forgiving and allowed me to reschedule lessons according to my school and sports. On a side note, this is where I met Steven Newman and Rujuta, who were both her students at the time and whom I would meet later in high school. After about eight months with this new teacher, the strains of school, and I stopped with this teacher too. Since then, I have not pursued any further musical education.

However, as time went on, my passion for music only grew. I started to listen to more and more music. I started to listen to and enjoy all different sorts of music, from trap to R&B to classical orchestral music. I also enjoyed listening to our school’s band and their field shows, and listen to music all the time now. Every time I used to listen to the power of the band, I would regret not joining band in sixth grade when I regarded band members as a coalition of nerds.

The moral of this story is simple, yet complicated when presented in the context of life. We must take every opportunity that we get. And while we have all heard this from counselors and we have all heard from our parents, and is almost as cliche as “Actions speak louder than words”; taking every opportunity that you get is possibly the most helpful advice any person can give to a student. While I am unsure about a lot of things, such as the structure of quarks(a real thing), I do know this for sure.

Chapters 1-10
g. Throughout this story, the theme of man vs machine and man vs society repeatedly appear. The man in this case represents the farmers who were hit the hardest  by the Great Depression, tenant farmers, and those farmers who live in the Mid-West. The machines are the new technological farming marvels that over-farm the land, and create the dust that ruins the farmer's lives. "Society" represents the bank and the other creations of society that rob from the farmers and force them off what has become their ancestral lands even though they do not actually own the land. On page 38, one of the tenant farmers who has been robbed by the bank of his land stands by as a large tractor driven by another farmer comes to wreck his house and  re-plow his land. He decides to take action and approaches the driver with a rifle. The driver defends and claims that he is but a pawn who follows orders from others. Then the enraged farmer asks who gave the orders, and the man says the bank. And then says that not to shoot the bank members, the board of directors that own the bank. And then he says that they are but pawns too for the bank people in the East in a never-ending chain. Exasperated, the farmer exclaims, "I don't aim to starve to death before I kill the man who is starving me. "