The Box is a short story ‘faction’ that uses postmodern stylistics (particularly fragmentation) to convey its central theme of ‘search and discovery’. This ‘search and discovery’ is primarily achieved through the central character Alex Montgomery and on a secondary level, through the character John Steinbeck, based on the real life author of The Grapes of Wrath. Both characters experience movements between personal and social discoveries, in which the themes of collective dynamism and human endurance are paramount. The Box is both interpretive and imaginative.
As a ‘faction’, it is an imaginative fiction based on fact. There are three main ‘facts’ on which the fiction in my short story has been based and developed. The first of these facts is the historical period referred to as the Dust Bowl Disaster occurring in America from 1935-1940. In particular to this period, I have used, just as Steinbeck has in The Grapes of Wrath, the Arvin Federal Camp as one of the settings of the text. Steinbeck’s 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath captures this period in its narrative of the Joad family’s journey from Oklahoma to California. Thus, I have used Steinbeck’s presentation of this period in The Grapes of Wrath for my work. A narrative that runs throughout the work is that of John Steinbeck’s imagined experience at Arvin Federal Camp while reporting for the San Francisco News. Steinbeck’s presence at the camp, (as opposed to my fictional diaries regarding his experiences) is the third fact on which The Box is based.
Through the independent research of the Dust Bowl Disaster, The Grapes of Wrath and John Steinbeck’s experience at the Arvin Federal Camp, I intended a major work that uses the universal theme of ‘search and discovery’ as a thread by which the story of Alex’s search and discovery of his ‘origins’ and Steinbeck’s search and discovery of collective dynamism and human endurance at a migrant camp is connected. The work also intends to imaginatively interpret possible experiences of Steinbeck’s time at the migrant camps that transpire or are evident in his later work The Grapes of Wrath. Through tense shifting and fragmentation, the responder can also explore and reflect on the contents of the box with the central character Alex.
The intended audience for my major work is ideally an educated one, familiar with the historical context of America in the 1930’s and the novel The Grapes of Wrath. The intended audience equally extends to a contemporary one as social similarities emerge between the contemporary refugee crisis and the exodus of farmers and their families to the West during the 1930’s. The contemporary responder is therefore able to apply these contemporary social values and attitudes to the work. While my work is based on the real life author John Steinbeck, the story of Alex and Diane is in no way related to or based on fact. In this way, I do not accuse Steinbeck of infidelity; rather I am exploring a possibility of a writer’s experience and using the story of Alex’s discovery as a vehicle for exploring the influence of Steinbeck’s experiences at the migrant camp (which are based on fact) on themes evident in The Grapes of Wrath.
The Box is made up of events from three different time periods. The first of these is 1985, the year in which Alex makes the important discovery of the box. This period is the narrative of Alex’s slow discovery of his possible ‘origins’ and also of the exploration of memoirs that in turn tell the story of a writer’s experience at a migrant camp. This narrative reflects an imaginative interpretation of the themes of human endurance and collective dynamism evident for me, in The Grapes of Wrath. In contrast to this is the narrative of 1936, revealing fictional events that evolve as inspirations for the novel The Grapes of Wrath. The third time period is set in present time, serving as a retrospective look at the events of 1985 and thus a reflective vehicle for the central character Alex. In 2003, Alex reflects on the significance of the discovery of the box and the vitality of his discovery of a father to his peace of mind. As he says at two different points in the text “…when I opened that box…I opened a wound. I acknowledged a painful void” and “It took me 48 years to fill the void, to heal the wounds previously unknown to me.”
A fragmented structure and constant ‘interruptions’ of retrospective commentaries heighten the notion of both ‘search’ and subsequent ‘discovery’. While Alex searches the past after being intrigued by the portrait, he discovers his possible father as being Steinbeck. Similarly, Steinbeck in 1936 searches for a report of the conditions of migrant camps but instead discovered an intangible force that characterised the Arvin Camp and the workers’ unrelenting will to survive. This fragmented storytelling invites the audience to ‘search and discover’ along with Alex and paints an overall sense of ‘discovery’, as in the ‘coming together’ of a puzzle.
Several text types have been employed including soliloquies, journal entries, letters and visuals. This contributes to the overall feel of searching through a box while Alex’s soliloquies are his private and reflective thoughts on the ‘search and discovery’ of his father and to a lesser extent, his mother’s past.
The juxtaposition of Alex’s 1985 reading of Steinbeck’s 1936 journal entries and the 1936 narrative of Steinbeck’s first arrival and the meeting with Mrs Risner is a way in which I demonstrate the influence of the experiences on Steinbeck’s writing of The Grapes of Wrath.
I initially decided to compose a creative critical response to Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. This stemmed from my interest of the preliminary study of ‘The Myth of the American Dream’. After reading and collecting several critiques on the novel, I still could not find my own thesis to discuss. Instead, I found myself wanting to explore the themes of collective dynamism and human endurance evident in The Grapes of Wrath. Tetsumaro Hayashi’s “A New Guide to Steinbeck’s major works, with critical explications” helped arouse my interest in discussing these themes. However, a special interest in the character of Ma Joad after reading the novel remains as the greatest influence in my exploration of these themes. In my work, the fictional model for the character of Ma Joad is Mrs Risner. My first attempt to write the creative critical response prompted the change in genre. The creative critical response appeared markedly to head in the direction of a short story. I also found that this genre would be a more effective vehicle in conveying the themes of collective dynamism and human endurance.
The creative component of my original idea of a critical response required biographical research on John Steinbeck, leading to my discovery of his time as a reporter for the San Francisco News and his experience of being at the Arvin Federal Camp. This experience became the basis on which his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath was written. This especially influenced my decision to compose a faction about a writer’s experiences as inspirations for his work. I have also retained my initial idea of a central character’s journey through self-discovery. This is incorporated in my work with the journey of discovering the box.
An investigation of the work’s context was vital in gaining an understanding of the social conditions of The Grapes of Wrath. Several websites on the Arvin Federal Camp (or Weedpatch Camp as it became known) provided visuals and detailed information about life in the camps, the camp’s system and general but highly useful information on dispossessed farmers. The photograph of the migrant child featured in the text was found on the Weedpatch website and became the inspiration for the character Liam. “The Norton anthology of American Literature” edited by Nina Baym et. al, provided invaluable historical background information for The Grapes of Wrath and solidified my intentions for the character Mrs Risner as the fictional inspiration for Steinbeck’s Ma Joad. Neil DeMarco’s textbook The USA: A Divided Union, outlined for me the 1930’s Depression, an additional issue apart from the Dust Storm Disaster vital to the mood of The Grapes of Wrath.
Alan Close’s faction “The Australian Love Letters of Raymond Chandler” helped me significantly in my creative approach. Close uses first and third person narratives and includes letters between Chandler and a young woman named Deirdre. I have also used a lot of these elements of first and third person narratives and letters in The Box. In addition, Close’s love story helped to shape the ‘love story’ of Diane and John in my own faction which in turn provided for the connection between Alex and his discovery of the box. You could say that the book gave me the confidence to ‘let my imagination run wild’.
I have used discontinuous narratives characteristic of postmodern fiction to illustrate the process of ‘searching’. While I use this convention, my work does not take on the undercutting attitudes of post modernism, as Peter Barry’s “Beginning Theory: An introduction to literary and Cultural Theory” has suggested. I have simply used fragmentation to illustrate Alex’s lack of knowledge about his mother’s past and the identity of his father and as previously mentioned, to give a sense of recollection and ‘searching’.
I initially intended to approach the short story as a traditional narrative with a continuous plot and occasional ‘interruptions’ with Alex’s 1985 reading of Steinbeck’s imagined 1936 journal. However, the inclusion of the actual 1936 narrative of Steinbeck’s first arrival and meeting of Mrs Risner proved effective to me, in illustrating the imagined influence of Steinbeck’s experience with the migrant workers on his future 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath. It enabled me to write reflectively of the despair of the migrant workers as well as human endurance through collective dynamism.
I have realised several concepts upon completion of the final product. Completing this process allowed me to ‘release’ my desire to write a story of my own. In addition the faction gave me the liberty to write a reflective and imaginative interpretation of Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath; a ‘search and discovery’ of my own thoughts on the themes of human endurance and collective dynamism.
Through discontinuous narratives, juxtapositions, and the integration of several text types, I have completed a work that has at its centre the concept of ‘search and discovery’ and the subsequent personal and societal revelations of this process. It is a short story about the inevitability of the ‘past’ to be revealed, the human need to fill forgotten voids and the importance of ‘knowing’ in achieving a peace of mind.