The Grapes Of Wrath Literary Analysis

The Grapes of Wrath tells the biting story of the Joad family as it battles to outlive and to preserve its respect in the center of the Great Depression. It is also the story of the social lesson of individuals like the Joads, inhabitant agriculturists who had been misplaced from their land and had chosen to move to California in trust of finding a superior life. John Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath in 1939, amid the Great Depression, and in response to the enduring he saw of individuals with disadvantages. He wrote regarding Oklahomans that were incapable to continue farming because of the disastrous climate conditions. Particularly, he wrote about the Joad family having to immigrate to California. Steinbeck composed the novel from a Marxist

“Capitalism produces great social and economical oppression during the American “Great Depression” and characterizes human dignity and spirit in the face of desperation” (Castro, 8). Steinbeck is seen criticizing the economic system that drove farmers to homelessness and extreme poverty. A quote from The Grapes of Wrath that supports this is that "the tenants, from their sun-beaten dooryards, watched uneasily when the closed cars drove along the fields... The tenant men stood beside the cars for a while, and then squatted on their hams and found sticks with which to mark the dust… Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold" (Steinbeck 34). Steinbeck gives us these two different groups to convey that when there is a definite bad outcome, there is really no way to face it that can make it easier. Because the inevitable cannot be avoided, the “nice” land owners had to evict the farmers, just like their emotionless counterparts