Read the following excerpt from chapter 21 of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath
And the smell of rot fills the country.
Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire.
Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the
hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let
the putrescence drip down into the earth.
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that
weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success.
The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And
children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificates-died of malnutrition-because
the food must rot, must be forced to rot.
The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold
them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the
kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen
to the screaming pigs being tilled in a ditch and covered with quicklime, watch
the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the
people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath.
In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy,
growing heavy for the vintage.
Analyze how the author uses the rhetorical devices of parallelism and diction to convey the tone of the
text. Be sure to include specific
details from the texts to support your answer.