RESEARCHER
The term that kept being repeated in chapter 7 was "Jalopy."
Jalopy is a term for an old, unpretentious automobile. This term was commonly used during the 1920s-1930s. In this chapter, Steinbeck states that salesmen are allowing to keep old rundown, unreliable cars to sell to families that have no clue about the condition of the car. Even though the cars may be cheap, families who could barely afford it buy it anyways because they need it for transportation. The salesmen are selling "Jalopies" to dispossessed croppers thinking they would purchase it due to their needs of transportation. These families buy the car anyways because they are manipulated by the salesmen cheap price offerings, but the irony is that even though the car may be cheap, the families aren't thinking about paying for gas and insurance, those salesmen aren't paying for any of that which means these families get tricked into purchasing these unreliable jalopy vehicles that wouldn't even last for a lifetime.
CONNECTOR
This connects to present day life because nowadays dealerships and private sellers are selling their old vehicles online for a cheap price, only to get rid of them because they are already old and rundown. I know this, because I called a dealership that had a car I was interested in due to the extremely low price and everything he said seemed unreal. He told me it was the most reliable classic car because everything has been remodeled. But I questioned myself, if everything was supposedly remodeled and rebuilt, why would it be this cheap? I did my research and figured out that these cars were made in the 1960s and no way any of them would be reliable this present day. Even though Steinbeck wrote about the issues of "Jalopies" in the 1920s-1930s, it is still occurring here today.
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