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Liminality appears in the second stage of ritual passage when the initiand has been detached from his original social structures or cultural traditions and has not been incorporated into the future social structure (Turner, 1967). It refers to the state of in-betweenness and also refers to places that have a neither-nor mediation such as allotments that are neither urban nor rural spaces (Meethan, 2012). The longing for a home is the theme that runs through John Steinbeck’s Grapes, which shows his consideration of homelessness. The novel’s representations of home all manifest the feature of in-betweenness, some between the familiar and the unfamiliar, some connecting the past and future, and some between reality and imagination, making the most of liminality within home spaces depicted by Steinbeck.

2.1.1 Dead Houses in Oklahoma between the Familiar and the Unfamiliar

The novel opens with a panorama of drought-stricken Oklahoma, with too many words of color, which is both red and gray but, in the end, neither red nor gray, with in-betweenness. The color gray appears many times throughout the first few chapters, which is defined as “a hybridization of black and white” that signifies “places, things, and people that occupy an unhomely space” (Cruz, 2007:57). “Unhomely” is a term from Homi Bhabha (1992), who defines it as an emotional state between two different cultures but not belonging to either side, the same as liminality, “neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremonial” (Turner, 1967:95). “Unhomely” is also similar to what Sigmund Freud (1919) calls the “uncanny” because both of these two words are from the same German word “unheimlich”. 

2.2 Liminal Landscapes with Potentiality

Besides home spaces, there are still other liminal landscapes worthy of discussion. Liminal spaces are precarious spaces that are fraught with the possibility of mutation and transformation. In addition, it is the third space with hybrid cultures or multiple choices. In this novel, the Mojave Desert that demarcates Oklahoma state and California state is a typical borderland with hybridity; the refugee camps the Joads and other migrants temporarily rest in are typical non-places with the potential power to transform the society. These two kinds of liminal landscapes with the features of potentiality offer the Joads and other migrants the power to go forward and pave the way to unite. 

2.2.1 Desert as the Borderland: Space for Life Liminality 

The Mojave Desert on the border of California is a neutral or intermediate zone. Van Gennep complements that whoever passes from one to the other through the borderland finds himself geographically and magico-religiously in a special situation of transition for a long time and emphasizes the spatial dimension of liminality (1960:18). In the borderland, the subjects feel perplexed, and also can be deeply aware of the life liminality. Gloria Anzaldúa puts forward the term “borderland” in her work Borderlands / La Frontera, which means that “the borderlands are physically present wherever two or more cultures edge each other, where people of different races occupy the same territory, where under, lower, middle and upper classes touch, where the space between two individuals shrinks with intimac本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。