I recently read the short story “The Leader of The People” by John Steinbeck. It's about a little boy named Jody Tiflin and his grandfather is coming to visit, however, they didn't receive the letter about that until the day the grandfather was supposed to arrive. Jody was so excited because he loved to hear his grandfather's stories about the Indians, but his father doesn't like them one morning at breakfast jody's father was going on about how the stories are old and repeated and no one wants to hear them anymore and the grandfather overhears him. The connection that this story has to everyday life is that our past is our past and we must not forget it. Everyone has their own past it is what makes them who they are. A lot of people said not to live in the past and that's true, however, we can't live in the past because it's over and done with but what we can do is not forget it. It is such an important part of what made us the person we are to this day and we can't let it die.
“Through the grandfather, Steinbeck explores the place and meaning that the nation’s pioneer heritage — the western movement — has for later generations” (Para, 6). What this means is that The idea of westering and the pioneer heritage is something that we can't forget. The westward expansion is what led to America. We bought all this land but people were so scared to move out here. What would things be like now if the first people never traveled out to the west? There would be so much open land that no one lived in and we would all be crammed living on the east