Grapes Guide.pdf - Minnesota Opera

1.8: TENT GROUNDS – EARLY EVENING (The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 16)
(1) Read the lyrics of “Handbills.” Why do you think this is sung to the same theme as “Good Machine” in scene
1.5? What is the irony of the migrants singing this instead of the owners who sent out the handbills?
(2) What is the Ragged Man’s story? Explain the sentence on p. 38 in “I Can’t Tell You” which begins, “I can’t tell
you the odor of death by degrees …” What does he mean by “a fence human beings cain’t breach”? Where have
we heard the reference to a fence before?
(3) Explain the irony of the Ragged Man’s reference to “Dead of heart failure” on p. 39.
(4) How do the men react to the man’s story? Why? How does Pa rationalize the Ragged Man’s words?
1.9: HIGHWAY OVERPASS – NIGHT (The Grapes of Wrath, Chapters 13 and 16)
(1) In “The Zephyr,” Rosaharn and Connie see a Lincoln Zephyr (which would have been like one of today’s Lincoln
Continentals) “flash” by, and it triggers their conversation about their dreams for California. Explain their two
points of view.
(2) In “One Star,” they begin with differing interpretations of the meaning of a single star. Identify their individual
points of view and then explain their resolution. (NOTE: The conversation upon which these two musical interludes are
based can be found toward the beginning of Chapter 16 presenting another opportunity for students reading the novel to compare
and contrast the original text with the libretto.)
(3) As the scene moves in time to under the overpass – dawn, we find that Grampa has died along the way
and is being buried in an old quilt with other tent families as witnesses. Casy is asked for a prayer. Summarize
“A Word for the Old Man.”
(4) There is significant foreshadowing in this scene. Who seems most upset by the death? Why do you think he
reacts so strongly? What does Tom do to calm him down?
(5) The end of this scene is also the end of Act One. Read “Reprise: ‘Us’” and then go back to the first time we heard
this refrain in 1.6. How is the meaning of “us” the same? How has it changed? Note Tom’s stage directions. How
does his character appear to be changing?
(NOTE: The scene of Grampa’s death is much different in the libretto than it appears in the novel. Students reading the original
will note when contrasting the two many dissimilarities, including the total omission of the Wilsons. We would encourage a
discussion of those changes and of why, given the challenges of moving the work from the page to the stage, the librettist made
the revisions he did. As a further note to the educator, Korie assigns Noah as chief mourner as a means of foreshadowing his
own death, and the dirt in his pocket will take the form of rocks in a bucket later in the opera.)
2.1: “EAT” DINER (The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 15)
act two
(1) In this scene, what kind of people are truck drivers portrayed to be? How does this extend the impression we got
in 1.1? Why might Steinbeck have been sympathetic to a person in this line of work?
(2) And how about the cook and ultimately the waitress at the diner? What do they have in common with the truck
drivers? Why might the truckers and the diner workers have more sympathy for the Okies than some of the other
people along Route 66? Why did the truckers give Mae such a large tip at the end of the scene? Give a possible
meaning of her lines at the top of p. 50: “I tell you, when I can’t sleep/ worryin’ my head off if the eggs’ll keep,/
who knows better the strain it is/ to haul your heavy load?”
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