usa the ghost of tom joad - parallelozero.com · the extraordinary journey of the joad family, the...
TRANSCRIPT
The extraordinary journey of the Joad family, the main character of John Steinbeck’s novel “The grapes of wrath”, runs along the remains of the glorious Route 66, through Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, up to the coast of California: the promised land of the Okies, the refugees and workers from Oklahoma dispossessed of their belongings by banks during the Great Depression and then forced to leave their lands. Today the West Coast is still the American Dream of the less fortunate, such as the many Mexicans who live and work there often in a condition of semi-slavery. Traces of that epic literary journey today try to tell metaphorically the different stages of a trip aimed at the realization of a project of redemption and freedom.
The initial section of the trip is described, often quoting the poetry of Steinbeck, as an inhospitable and alien starting place, a complex human dimension where the urge to run away is clear; in the middle we see America (Americanland), defined and broken by significant solitudes, large empty spaces filled with silence and deep distances; the arrival portrays instead a more reassuring humanity, represented by the stories of some Mexican migrants, who arrived in the United States to implement the project of a better life, suspended between memory and future.
Their condition proves to be very difficult, since for them America becomes a “jaula de oro” (golden cage), a place where, once inside, everyone is trapped without being able to return to their country of origin. A place where people are forced to harvest fruits and vegetables seasonally in the fields of rich California.
New Mexico, Albuquerque. Two children of Mexican origin play in the garden of their house, just outside town, where they live with their parents
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