Mary Theresa Silvia Vermette has gone so far in her questioning of Steinbeck's 'sensitivity to otherness' in Tortilla Flat as to claim that the Portuguese in California responded to Steinbeck's problematic attitude to their ethnic group with the erection of a statue of Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, a Portuguese navigator who in 1542 discovered California (Silva 95). Reinaldo Silva, for example, has noticed Steinbeck's jaundiced portrayals of the Portuguese American, referring to the passages featuring Big Joe Portagee and Rosa Martin (both of them Portuguese Americans) as 'filthy, lazy and sexually promiscuous' (101). Today, and although Steinbeck is renowned for his siding with the downtrodden and the deprived, this novel is frequently pointed out by those who concur that reading Steinbeck may provoke 'essential dialogue about ethnicity' (Shillinglaw 49). It has to be recalled that it depicts all kinds of unusual and amusing adventures of a group of misfits living on the margins of society. Perhaps because it was published during the depths of the Depression, when readers were eager to learn about people 'happy with even less than they had,' Tortilla Flat was a success and the first book to bring Steinbeck public and critical acclaim (French 53). In this sense, this discussion aims to provide additional evidence that reading literature comparatively leads to new insights and recognitions. By focusing on the similarities between the writers' characterization in these works, which differs significantly from the positive portrayals in their central novels in that both of them stress the protagonists' laziness, stupidity, parasitism and even promiscuity, I attempt to ascertain the grounds for reconciliation of these two different sides of Steinbeck and Hardy. In light of this view, my essay offers a comparative analysis of John Steinbeck's accounts of 'paisanos'-as the American 1962 Nobel Prize winner refers to the mixed-blood inhabitants of California in the novel Tortilla Flat (1935)-and a collection of anecdotes about the Australian 'battler,' The Great Australian Lover and Other Stories (1967) by the Australian novelist and story-teller, Frank Hardy. According to Galik, such study is necessary and productive because it not only provides us with new knowledge and allows for 'deeper understanding in various areas of literature, its history, theory, and criticism,' but it also enables a more comprehensive insight into the study of related literary facts across cultural boundaries (Galik 99). Several other patterns of imagery surface in the works, of course, primary among them figures of light and shadow.Д¬ritics such as Marian Galik have stressed the importance of drawing literary parallels between literatures either of the same or different epochs, and sometimes traditionally and spatially very distant from each other (Lin 65). When the reader first meets Jim Casy of The Grapes of Wrath, he is described thus: вЂњIt was a long head, bony, tight of skin, and set on a neck as stringy and muscular as a celery stalk.вЂќ Similarly, in the first paragraph of the novel, the earth itself, with its cracked, desecrated day and mournful wind becomes a living image of the people's spirits. The association becomes complete when Pepe tries to speak, and the only sound of which he is capable is a вЂњthick hiss.вЂќ Along with the very frequent animal imagery, the reader often encounters earth imagery, usually in the form of a simile. Pepe вЂњcrawled,вЂќвЂњwormed,вЂќвЂњwriggled,вЂќвЂњdarted,вЂќвЂњwrithed,вЂќ and вЂњsquirmedвЂќ in the final stages of his torment. When Pepe is stripped of all civilized tools, his movements are increasingly described in verbs that suggest a primordial or serpentine creature. In вЂњFlight,вЂќ for example, the reader finds animal imagery of two sorts. Even a brief purview of recent criticism will indicate such common patterns as animal (for instance, as in The Pearl) and earth imagery. John Steinbeck's use of imagery is a well-known and frequently mentioned subject in discussions of his stylistic art.

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