Summary Of The Glass Castle And The Grapes Of Wrath

Today, most families are faced with hardships, but Jeannette Walls and John Steinbeck wrote some of the best examples of endurance in their novels The Glass Castle and The Grapes of Wrath. In The Glass Castle, Walls wrote about her childhood and problems that were unique to her family. Steinbeck wrote about a very common issue that tenant farmers faced during the dust bowl and Great Depression of the 1930’s. He wrote of a fictional family, the Joads. The Walls and Joad family both lived their lives under completely different circumstances, but they had two common characteristics that allowed them to survive, loyalty and resilience.
The Walls family, in The Glass Castle, constantly was on the move, they had a nomadic life style. This made them …show more content…
A poor tenant farming family living in Oklahoma, who has been pushed out by the landowners, who realized they could make more money by using fewer men on tractors, during a drought. Faced with these hardships they exhibited similar traits to the Walls, they showed the same loyalty and resilience. The family’s ability to pack up and sell all of their belongs and travel to California along with all the other tenant farmers shows the trust they had in one in another to find work and survive. On their long journey to California tenant farmers set up communities in which they take care of on their own, in resistance to the discrimination they receive from people along their journey. Once they arrive at a camp along the way, the family is in awe of the camps that other tenant farmers are staying in and how they are run, Tom asks the leaders of the camps,“ You mean to say the fellas that runs the camp is jus’ fellas- campin’ here?’.... Central Committees keeps order and makes rules.. (Steinbeck 287).” The government camps acted as a safe place for the migrant workers, the police had no jurisdiction on the land, so the oakies acted as the law enforcement. If the police had any jurisdiction at the government camps they would do whatever they could to get the Oakies off the land and back to Oklahoma. The Joads were loyal to one another because the California police, farm owners, and other residents were openly hostile to all "Okies," and sticking together increased the migrants ' chances of survival. Late one night, recently paroled Tom Joad, in a fit anger killed a policeman in retaliation for the murder of his close friend, Jim Casy. He felt it was the right thing to do because how well Casy had treated him and always showed him loyalty. Once Tom reaches the camp sight and tells his family, they agree to help hide and protect him. While recovering the family members keep watch to make sure nothing