The Grapes of Wrath Socratic Seminar Reflection

    This socratic seminar influenced my way of thinking, not just about the book but on a lot of issues
in life. I thought that because many people asked great level three questions, we were able to connect
themes in the text to the real world, which altered my perspective on a variety of things. One thing that someone asked that made me think more in depth was about why John Steinbeck has added many parts about animals getting run over or killed. I had not really noticed this before, but when I thought about it more, I realized that the book did have many instances where animals were killed, so I thought that there must be some symbolic meaning relating to the killing of the animals.

      One of my peers made a statement about how even the best of people can let a little bit of power get to the best of them. This person had mentioned reading about an experiment conducted, where ordinary college-aged kids were put into a situation where some would be policemen, while others would be prisoners. Within days, the ones who were, acting as policemen had let the power get to their heads and began torturing the "prisoners". I agreed with what my classmate had said because I had also watched a documentary about this same experiment and basically what the documentary had said, was that anyone has the ability to be evil if they are granted the power to do so. It is in human nature to want to see ourselves superior to others. The statement that I least agreed with was when someone said Ruthie matured the most throughout the book. Although I thought Ruthie matured to some extent throughout the story, I certainly did not think she was the one who grew the most. The characters I thought grew the most were Tom, Ma, and arguably Rose of Sharon. I thought that Tom grew a lot because he had started off as someone who just got out of prison, and in the end, he had managed to lead his family to California, helped provide for his family, and he discovered what he thought was the meaning of life. Ma grew because she went from being in the supportive "housewife" role, to being the leader of the family, and the only one keeping the family together. Rose of Sharon is a more arguable case, but I thought that she grew from being the naive, girl who complained throughout the journey, to stepping into a motherly and responsible role, when she cared for the starving man in the barn. If I had the opportunity to respond to anything during the seminar, I would have responded to the person who said that the function of man throughout the book was more than just working. They said it was providing for your family and trying to give them a better life. I would have said that "providing for your family and trying to give them a better life" goes hand and hand with work. "Giving your family a better life" results from work. Of course the men are working to give their families better lives. So in broader terms, and in general, the function of man throughout the book was to work.

      I thought that us making our own questions for the seminar worked really well. Since we made our own questions, I think it forced many of us to think into more depth about the themes of the book and I thought we had a more thought- provoking discussion than we usually do. Also, making our own questions made the conversation have more variety, since people were original in their questions and did not really ask the same thing.

     Something that needs improvement for the next seminar is maybe not requiring everyone to ask one question because I felt like a lot of people were rushing to get their questions out so that they could get their points in that area. I think the conversation would flow better if we could just talk about a few thought-provoking questions. Maybe the seminar could be graded, by how many times a person participated because I think it is hard for some people to come up with questions and it makes the flow of the conversation choppy and awkward.