In the last few lessons with have been given a script of The Grapes Of Wrath play and have been given a scene to act out. My first opinion of the play was that the characters would have to really be thought about in the way that they act as the performance is quite deep, the story is set in Oklahoma in the 1930's which is when the sandy storms created the so called 'dust bowls' (The phrase Dust Bowl was used during the 1930's to refer to the prairie regions of the United States and Canada, from Saskatchewan and Manitoba to the north, all the way to Oklahoma and parts of Texas and New Mexico in the south. The many very bad dust storms and droughts in this area caused major damage to the area's economy, ecology and agriculture.) This is shown in the picture to the left of a farmer and his two sons in a sand storm.
We improvised a few scenes of how we thought that the family would react on having to move from their house due to the drought, and in the recent lesson today we found out what characters that Miss chose for us and what she thought that we would adapt or fit to. The character that i have been chosen to play is Tom Joad, who i didn't exactly know tons about as I have only really just read through his character profiles online and what sort of person he is so I decided to do some research on him and Casy as their close characters and have found this -
"Tom is kind and often merciful, yet quick to anger and fiercely independent. As a man of action, he embodies one of the novel's main philosophical strands, pragmatism, standing in contrast to the idealistic and talkative Jim Casy. While Casy is predominantly an observer and commentator on the human condition, Tom's acts of humanity are subconscious, his insights and compassion intuitive. Tom is concerned with the practical aspects of his life as they relate to the here and now, not the moral or ideological circumstances surrounding his actions. In this sense, Tom and Casy follow inverted paths in the development of their characters. After Casy has the opportunity to witness his beliefs acted out by the jail inmates, he moves from a position of observation and contemplation to one of action. Tom's social role moves in the opposite direction, from one of action to one of reflection. Not until Tom stops moving and reacting does he have the opportunity to absorb Casy's ideas. When he does so, however, Tom's development comes full-circle as he pledges to return to continue the actions begun by Casy."
