Response To The Grapes Of Wrath

Response Paper to The Grapes of Wrath In John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck’s use of symbolism through the innocent bee that cannot take care of itself and the continuously chewed gum paints a remarkable picture of the lower class workers in the Dust Bowl/Depression era. The symbolism construed in The Grapes of Wrath represents how repression leads to adaptation thus survival of the fittest. This novel starts out in Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl; the farmers are unable to produce crops and the banks are forcibly evicting them, and from there many are choosing to head to California in hopes of getting one of the many jobs advertised. Unfortunately, all the job offers were simply a hoax by the rich to attract a cheaper labor source. The rich corporations symbolize how man has displayed the sad propensity to exploit his fellow man in times of hardship. Using the bee to embody the plight of the lower class workers such as the Joads and the truck driver helps to define how helpless the migrant workers were to the whims of the rich. Thanks only to others in the same miserable situation, helping each other out that the workers …show more content…
In relation, Steinbeck’s use of symbolism in The Grapes of Wrath presents a realistic and unnerving story about the plight of the migrant workers versus the wealthy corporations that seek to ensnare and degrade them. Like the Joad family, roughly 40 percent of migrant farmers immigrated to the San Joaquin Valley (Mass Exodus from the Plains n.p.), picking grapes and cotton during the time of the Great Depression, Steinbeck’s novel is a testament to all of them, many who did not have a voice and many who perished using their voice to speak