New Hypermedia Possibilities and

The Grapes of Wrath

Created by Frances Lord

Final Project for English 511

Professor Randy Bass

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Introduction | "Archive" | Chapter 12

At the beginning of the semester, when I was searching for books to include in my reading list for my oral exams, I stumbled upon a copy of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath that my sister used in her eleventh grade American Literature class. Or course I was extremely excited at the find. Not only did the book fit perfectly on my syllabus of depression era social documentaries, but here was a completely free copy for me to use. (And free is the important word here!) And her copy was in fantastic condition. With minimal markings and no bent pages, it hardly looked like the book had been read.

I never had actually read The Grapes of Wrath myself. I seem to remember that I had picked it up a few times to try reading for fun, but I never got past the first page. I also recall the pain that my friends that had to read the book allegedly endured. They compared the reading experience to Chinese water torture or being sent to the rack. The word from late-eighties-early-nineties teenagers is that the book causes long, slow pain. If The Grapes of Wrath is the classic that literary proficienados make it out to be, then for some reason modern, novice readers are missing something huge. And what that means for modern, novice readers like my sister who have to read the book for class, is that their teachers have not found the right keys to unlock the greatness of the text. So when I began reading the book for my oral exam, I was not only determined to figure out why this book is considered such a classic, but how this greatness could become more apparent to the modern, novice reader.

At the same time that I was preparing for my oral exams, I was also taking the class here at Georgetown entitled "Text, Knowledge, Pedagogy" with Professor Randy Bass and it just so happens that this class provided some clues to figuring out how to teach The Grapes of Wrath to the modern, novice reader. The first clue that I found came from George P. Landow’s book, Hypertext which lauds new hypermedia technology as the great facilitator for interdisciplinary study of texts. And the second clue came from Richard A. Lanham’s The Electronic Word which explains new media technology’s radical effect on a viewer’s understanding of the material by prompting the reader to vacillate between looking at and looking through it. In the following pages I hope to demonstrate more clearly new media technology’s potential for helping the novice reader understand The Grapes of Wrath and other classics as well.

My first full fledged attempt of reading The Grapes of Wrath came in the middle of an intense study of documentary work of thirties America. Even though I was researching in preparation for an oral exam in English, I believed it was necessary to take a cross disciplinary approach and explore the historical, political, literary, and popular climate of the thirties. I examined various primary and secondary materials in this research: contemporary novels, life histories, photographs, film, party platforms, biographies, and histories. It was in this fuller context that I found myself interested in reading The Grapes of Wrath. It was in this fuller context that I too came to believe that this text is an American great.

The first way that new hypermedia technology can assist in the understanding of The Grapes of Wrath is through facilitating the contextualization of the work in its place in thirties America. This novel, like many others, is clearly a product of its time. It was written in the cross-section of thirties political, philosophical, and popular currents. Normally the work is taught to novice students outside this context. Perhaps there is some discussion of text book reading about the plight of the Okies. But more often than not this explanation is dry and detached-not the best means of understanding the nature of this human tragedy. George Landow explains in Hypertext, "Once placed within a hypertext environment, a document no longer exists alone. It always exists in relation to other documents in a way that a book or a printed document never does and never can." (143) And the internet can provide this environment. However, it is not quite that easy. Students left free to roam the murky waters of the internet are too vast and too difficult to navigate for any clear understanding of the novel’s thirties context. It is still necessary for the teacher to direct the student to the information. As an example of the potential opportunities that a teacher can provide, I have created an "archive" of helpful links to primary materials like cartoons, political speeches, and photographs, and secondary materials as well.

By far the more radical effect that new media technology could have upon the teaching of texts like The Grapes of Wrath is the medium's ability to prompt the learner toward gaining information by looking both through and at the presented texts. In the Western school system we learn to communicate through reading and writing with black letters and white pages. Words are looked upon as only a bare shell that carries the message. Richard Lanham explains in The Electronic Word, "this unselfconcious transparency has become a stylistic, one might almost say cultural, ideal for Western Civilization. The best style is the style not noticed...."(4) Our school systems push students to look only for depth, privileged written texts over other sorts of communicative efforts, thus excluding other useful means of gaining understanding and knowledge.

Has the melody of a song ever touched a part of your consciousness that words could not? Has a pictured ever summed up an experience perfectly and completely (you know how the saying goes..."a picture is worth a thousand words"). This is not to say that depth and the written word should be abandoned or forgotten. But why should other means of gaining understanding be less privileged?

New Hypermedia technology has the potential to bring forth knowledge in a manner which includes both the traditional emphasis on depth and other more surface understandings like visual or auditory ones. And for a text like The Grapes of Wrath, which can be seen as an effort to engender compassion for and an understanding of the plight of the "Okies," the text is surely complemented by other forms of understanding. Imagine the benefits of using hypermedia to teach the novel to the newcomer. The material can be approached by providing opportunities for the novice to look through the words and find depth and look at contemporary pictures to find surface meaning.

In an effort to provide an example of the useful potential of new hypermedia technology, I have taken a section of The Grapes of Wrath (Chapter 12), made it into a Web document, and made links to both pertinent photographic texts and pertinent written and photographic texts. It is my hope that this sort of work would be used for not only an initial reading of the novel, but for exercises that develop the understanding of the novel as well. Students should not only be provided with explicit examples of complementary material that can be both looked through and at. Rather, they should be encouraged to make these sort of connections as well. An example of one such assignment would entail searching the chapter for a photograph of choice and then exploring the novel for written text that complelments the photograph. Through an effort to create exercises that emphasize the importance of examining both the surface and the depth of texts, new media technology has the potential to assist in an enjoyable and meaningful experience of The Grapes of Wrath for both novices and experts alike.

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