The Grapes Of Wrath And Howard s Cinderella - 2174 Words

In a world that is coming apart, due significantly to the 1930’s Depression, family life deteriorates when jobs becomes lost as well as do those whose sense of worth is bound up in them. In both stories, the coping mechanism in males deprived by stress of job loss leads inevitably to a loss of dignity rendering them less able to function as heads of the family. It is at this juncture that women feel the threat to family life is endangered and instinctively cope with the situation, however they can. Lastly, hope, which was sustained, for a time, diminishes for both families, leading to the breaking apart of all that each envisioned. Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Howard’s Cinderella Man demonstrate how quickly a family can disintegrate when its hopes are unrealized. The societal weight of job possession, born of social expectation, is sufficiently powerful that its absence is felt in several instances in Cinderella Man. The protagonist, a boxing champion, Jam es Braddok faces a stress of job loss, becoming weaker in the position of a father and a husband in the family. The most legendary boxer the â€Å"Cinderella Man† falls apart due to the economy that has rocked to the bottom. He is unable to pay the bills, and is forced to go on public relief, that his stress starts building up over time. He would come home with money that he made that day which was about $6.24 and calculates how long he has to work to pay off the bills with the look of shame on his face. James is too