HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS
"Literary geography is typically about humans inhabiting spaces, and at the same time the spaces that inhabit humans."
How to Read Literature Like a Professor--Thomas C. Foster
The Grapes of Wrath consists both of geographical importance in regard to location, but also of a character importance derived from relationship with the land. "Sure, cried the tenant men, but it's our land. We measured it and broke it up. We were born on it, and we got killed on it, died on it. Even if it's no good, it's sill ours" (Steinbeck 45). Our home, our environment largely makes us who we are, and that is typically true for any person. My mom always told me, "You are a product of your environment." Although she meant it with regard to parental upbringing, the saying rings true: people will demonstrate the qualities and characteristics of their surroundings and acquaintances.
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Nathan Hart on HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS: Enivironment has such a great
Rachael Sarver on HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS: I also wrote about environment
I also wrote about environments in my blog entry "Where You Are Is What You Are." Not only does this apply to you and the people around you, but when other people are trying to figure you out, they make a lot of assumptions based on where you are from.
Enivironment has such a great effect on the life and situation of people. Even now a days, if you think about people and their environments you can make many comparison. Whats the first thing you think of when you here "ghetto"? Gangs, drugs, homeless, murder, etc. You automatically think of bad things. So the enivironment that you live often marks who you are seen as. That can definately be a very bad thing. You may not be associated with any of that, but because what people perceive of different enivironments you can be put under a certain classisification. So I believe that environment is very important to understading things.
Good point. Not only do our surroundings impact our personal behaviors but how others identify us, as well--I hadn't expanded the thought as far as that when I originally read Fosters claim. People, almost naturally, attach stereotypes and presumptions to others based solely on environment. On some level, those predispositions will play out in the works we read, and in return can allow for a predictable amount of manipulation, so to speak, on the authors part.