Grapes Guide.pdf - Minnesota Opera

(3) What is the dramatic purpose of having the opera chorus represent many truckers and waitresses along Route
66? (NOTE: This part of the scene is another instance of Korie moving the focus from “scenic” to “panoramic.” The original
chapter is an intercalary one, and the man asking for the loaf of bread is an anonymous Okie. Notice that with the entrance
of Pa, the focus returns to “scenic” and the narrative returns to the journey of the Joads.)
2.2: MOHAVE DESERT – NIGHT (The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 18)
(1) In “Dry Blue Night” (p. 52), John tells his story. What has happened to him and how does he feel about it? Pick
out specific words and phrases that help to identify his emotional state.
(2) As the truck pivots on the stage, we see in back and pick up the conversation between Rosasharn and her husband
Connie in “We Can Be Quiet.” What seems to be the state of their relationship in this scene?
(3) As the truck again pivots, we see Ma holding the now-dead Granma. In Ma’s “Rest peaceful, Mama,” she seems
to weave parts of “Dry Blue Night” and “We Can Be Quiet” together. What are her thoughts about crossing the
desert?
(4) In the septet, “Dry Blue Night,” which ends the scene, all the musical themes are woven together. The stage
directions say that this final septet is a “soaring reflection on the three stages of life: youth, flushed with ardor;
the middle-aged, wondering where you went; and the old; passing on.” How does the Joad family become “everyfamily”
at this point in the opera? How does their story reach beyond the migrant workers’ situation in the
Depression of the 1930s?
2.3 INSPECTION STATION – APPROACHING DAWN (The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 18)
(1) In “Keep Right and Pull Over,” how does Ma get the family through the inspection check point?
(2) Read the stage directions for the tehachapi valley – dawn. How are we to envision this valley? The
musical sequence is entitled, “Like They Promised,” and the reference is not only to what the Joads had been
told California was like. There is a Biblical allusion operating here too. What is it? Which lines make that
connection? Who were “them Chosen Folk of yore”? Why did they cross the Sinai? Where were they going?
2.4 ENDICOTT FARM CIRCA 1849 (The Grapes of Wrath, Chapters 19 and 21)
(NOTE: Chapters 19 and 21 are intercalary narrations on the history of land ownership in California. Korie has invented a
family, the Endicotts, to represent in microcosm this history. Note that they grow plums.)
(1) George J. Endicott represents in microcosm the history of land ownership in California. Summarize this history
in general and his story in particular. What is his favorite pronoun? What does this indicate about his attitude
toward his property?
(2) In highway barricade, the present, the scene shifts forward to the migrant croppers’ search for work.
What are they told by the growers?
(3) In endicott plum groves, circa 1924, the time shifts back again to around six years before the Okies and
the other migrants arrive on the scene. Through the words of Endicott III, we can see how farming has changed.
What have these changes been? What has happened to the relationship between the farm owner and his land?
What might be the significance of “the plum tree my Grandpa planted died”? What is Endicott III’s plum tree?
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