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Summary Passage Discussion Questions Theme Song

**Summary Chapter 11 In Chapter 11 the farmers have moved off the land leaving it vacant and lonesome. Corporate farm workers are now farming the lands with no passion at all which causes a seperation between the land and the farmer. This lack of passion makes farming just a job for these new mechanical farmers instead of a lifestyle. They come to work for a paycheck, drive a tractor over the land, and then go home, completely losing all emotional connections to the job and land itself. The farmers are no longer one with the land. The chapter ends with an invasion of the farm houses by animals as the tenant farmer's former homes begin to decay in the dust and the winds.

This is the intercalary chapter which officially marks the end of the Joad family's story in Oklahoma. It shows the corporate farmer's greed and lack of sympathy for their fellow man, since they are the reason the tenant farmers are being kicked off the land they were once so close to. Their only interest is making money and getting their job done as quickly as possible, as they treat the land with hostility, put tractors and other forms of machinery between them and the fields, and see the land as a job rather than a home. This treatment completely destroys the physical and spiritual ties between the farmers and the land.

**Passage Chapter 11 "But the machine man, driving a dead tractor on land he does not know and love, understands only chemistry; and he is contemptuous of the land and of himslef. When the corrugated iron doors are shut, he goes home, and is not the land."(pg. 119)

This further shows the seperation between the farmer and the land, and their emotional detachment from it. Steinbeck over exaggerates the loss of life between the two to effectively show the greed and selfishness of the corporate farmers, which is one of the main causes of the Joads, as well as many other tenant farmers', poverty and is also a central theme of the book.

**Discussion Questions Chapter 11 Why does Steinbeck argue it is important that people live on the land they farm?

Because Steinbeck believes that the land is so much more than just dirt, stones, and plants, that it has a lot to offer and you have to be one with the land to see its full potential. "Carbon is not a man, nor salt nor water nor calcium. He is all these, but he is much more, much more; and the land is so much more than its analysis. The man who is more than his chemistry, walking on the earth, turning his plow point for a stone, dropping his handles to slide over an outcropping, kneeling in the earth to eat his lunch; that man who is more than his elements knows the land is more than its analysis." (pg. 118) The tenant farmers knew the land for what it was, they knew it's strengths and weaknesses, they devoted their lives to it, it was all they knew. The corporate farmers don't care for the land or what it brings, so they plant cotton, which sucks all the life out of the soil, ultimatley killing the land.

**Theme Song Chapter 11

Lyrics Lying awake intent at tuning in on you. If I was young it didn't stop you coming through. Oh-a oh They took the credit for your second symphony. Rewritten by machine and new technology, And now I understand the problems you can see. Oh-a oh I met your children Oh-a oh What did you tell them? Video killed the radio star. Video killed the radio star. Pictures came and broke your heart. Oh-a-a-a oh And now we meet in an abandoned studio. We hear the playback and it seems so long ago. And you remember the jingles used to go. Oh-a oh You were the first one. Oh-a oh You were the last one. Video killed the radio star. Video killed the radio star. In my mind and in my car, we can't rewind we've gone too far Oh-a-aho oh, Oh-a-aho oh Video killed the radio star. Video killed the radio star. In my mind and in my car, we can't rewind we've gone too far. Pictures came and broke your heart, put the blame on VTR. You are a radio star. You are a radio star. Video killed the radio star. Video killed the radio star. Video killed the radio star. Video killed the radio star.
 * I heard you on the wireless back in '52




 * Analysis
 * You can interpret this as the new technology took over and the old ways were thrown out and abandoned just as the tenant farmers were with their houses, which left their houses to corrode and die out. You can see this in the line, "Rewritten by machine and new technology, And now I understand the problems you can see."