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…

“The Grapes of Wrath” is set in the Dust Bowl of Oklahoma. Tom Joad is being released from prison where he was serving four years for manslaughter. He meets a preacher, Jim Casy, who has given up his calling because he believes that he is as lost as his congregation and is not fit to lead anymore. Tom and Jim head to California to find Tom’s family who had left to find work. Tom eventually find his family and they set up in the migrant camps that are overcrowded and lacking food. They find out…

The Grapes of Wrath undoubtedly demonstrated the conflicts that American families endured on their journey from the Dust Bowl to California. This novel was written by John Steinbeck, a novelist and writer who witnessed the discrimination farmers had to tolerate on their migration to California. This gruesome journey caused misery, agony, regret among various families. Still, a majority of these families clung onto something crucial: their religion. The families prayed to God for their…

In The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck uses the unconventional, intercalary chapters in the structure of this novel. These intercalary chapters are a narrative technique in which Steinbeck informs the reader about the economic impact of the Great Depression upon the common farmers in the U.S. during that time. In chapter 11, Steinbeck uses the intercalary chapter technique to describe the incoming of the modern tractors and the effect this modernization had on the land the farmers had occupied.…

From Europe colonizing America to the Atlantic Slave Trade, migrations have been defining moments in world history-- the travels of the farmers depicted in John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath are no exception. Steinbeck aims to detail the mass migration of Midwest farmers to the West during Dust Bowl of the 1930s for a worldwide audience. In this narrative a symbolic, classic piece of American literature is formed. The author expresses his sympathy and compassion for these weary travelers. Through…

Bible. The uniqueness of people to have no repeated DNA strands, no same fingerprints, and no like thoughts links to the formation of these different denominations and allows for the reading of literature to influence. John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath depicts yet another interpretation of the Bible for readers to see lived out in the setting of The Great Depression. The biblical leader of the Israelites, Moses, showed a strong connection to Rose of Sharon’s dead baby. In the Bible,…

The moment The Grapes of Wrath was published, Steinbeck created a storm that swept through America. Some viewed the book as propaganda while others saw it as novel written "from the depths of his heart with a sincerity seldom equaled." Despite this controversy, the book developed into a "literary portrait that defined an era." The miserable and destitute living conditions the migrants faced are now the image of the migration to the west. Even now, the book is viewed as the defining authority on…

The Grapes of Wrath tells the story of the Joad family and their struggles during the Great Depression. After losing the family farm, the Joads decide to leave for California in hopes of finding work. The Joads hit many bumps along the way, and when they finally arrive in The Golden State they realize that everything is not as it seems. Jobs are scarce, living conditions are terrible, and people like them are not wanted. Having no other choice, they decide to stay and work it out. The Joads go…

John Steinbeck stressed significant contrast between men and women in society, by providing extensive work on developing protagonist male characters to prove their superior rank. The Grapes of Wrath, taking place during the Great Depression, brings life to a family struggling through a serious drought in Oklahoma, and attempting to find better work and land in California. The novel, written in 1939, at the end of the depression, highlights strong male roles as Tom Joad decides to move his family…

There are a multitude of themes that can be acknowledged throughout the entirety of The Grapes of Wrath. One theme that I noticed to be prevalent in almost every chapter was the idea of joining together, putting aside differences, and cooperating, regardless of whether you were strangers. Supporting your fellow man seemed to recur again and again. This can be seen in the way all the characters in the story interact with each other. The Joad family begins their journey to California as a broken…