John Steinbeck's novel, The Grapes of Wrath, is a moving account of the social plight of Dustbowl farmers and is widely considered an American classic. The novel takes place during the depression of the 1930s in Oklahoma and all points west to California. Steinbeck uses the Joad family as a specific example of the general plight of the poor farmers. The Joads are forced off of their farm in Oklahoma by the banks and drought, and they, like many other families of the time, head out for the promised land of California. They endure much hardship along the way, and they finally make it to California only to find that work is scarce and human labor and life are cheap. Tom Joad, the eldest son in the family, starts the book freshly out of jail and slowly evolves from selfish goals to a sense of an ideal worldly purpose in uniting people against injustice. Jim Casy, an errant preacher who is accepted into the Joad family early into the story, changes his beliefs to include all people in a sort of oversoul, as he helps to organize the workers to battle the extreme injustice done onto them by the farm owners and discriminating locals. Whereas the Joads start out as one family, by the end of the story their family becomes one with other families who are weathering the same plight of starvation and senseless violence. In The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck emphasizes the power of groups over the individual's power to survive poverty and violence through character evolution, plot and the use of figurative and philosophical language.
Tom Joad begins the novel with self-seeking aims, but with the ex-preacher Jim Casy as a mentor, he evolves into an idealistic group leader. Tom first meets Jim on his way home from jail. There begins a lasting friendship with the verbose preacher, who is going through a belief makeover and steadily moving toward the Emersonian oversoul including all people in a general spirit of human love and kinship. Tom is steadily angered more and more with his family's plight, but even into the beginning of the family's journey, he still has individualistic thoughts that consume his ideas. When Jim is trying to get Tom to think of the big picture, to get a worldly view of the effects of the hundreds of thousands of people moving west, Tom says, 'I'm still laying my dogs down one at a time,'; and 'I climb fences when I got fe...
... middle of paper ...
...e way for the concern of the people'; (Bowden 196). And most critics agree that 'the sense of communal unit grows steadily through [Steinbeck's] narrative'; (Lisca 97). In the chapters that explain the general situation of life in California, Steinbeck figuratively and philosophically explains the evolution of unity and equality.
The Grapes of Wrath clearly demonstrates the theme that when overcoming hardship the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. At the end of the story Ma Joad has come to understand that her family is just part of another larger family of the migrant poor. Tom Joad comes full circle from individualistic aims to embracing the group and organization of the masses. The main events in the Joads' life at the government camp and the strike at the peach orchards also emphasize unity. At times in his narrative Steinbeck even blatantly explains his philosophies of group power and shared burden. As one critic puts it 'The family of man is even more than a necessity for the Joads: it is an ideal of the novel'; (Bowden 199). Steinbeck truly succeeds in giving the reader the message that when united people stand, but divided they fall.
The Grapes of Wrath is a novel by John Steinbeck that exposes the desperate conditions under which the migratory farm families of America during the 1930's live under. The novel tells of one families migration west to California through the great economic depression of the 1930's. The Joad family had to abandon their home and their livelihoods. They had to uproot and set adrift because tractors were rapidly industrializing their farms. The bank took possession of their land because the owners could not pay off their loan. The novel shows how the Joad family deals with moving to California. How they survive the cruelty of the land owners that take advantage of them, their poverty and willingness to work.
In the 1930s, America’s Great Plains experienced a disastrous drought causing thousands of people to migrate west. As their land was devastated by the Dust Bowl, deprived farmers were left with few options but to leave. The Grapes of Wrath depicts the journey of the Joads, an Oklahoma based family which decides to move to California in search of better conditions. Coming together as thirteen people at the start, the Joads will undertake what represents both a challenge and their only hope. Among them are only four women embodying every ages: the Grandma, the Mother and her two daughters, the pregnant Rose of Sharon and the young Ruthie. Appearing in Chapter Eight the mother, who is referred to as “Ma”, holds a decisive role in Steinbeck’s novel. She is, along with her son Tom (the main character of the book), present from the early stage of the story until its very end. We will attempt to trace back her emotional journey (I) as well as to analyze its universal aspects and to deliver an overall impression on the book (II).
Throughout the novel, The Grapes of Wrath there are intercalary chapters. The purpose of these chapters are to give the readers insight and background on the setting, time, place and even history of the novel. They help blend the themes, symbols, motifs of the novel, such as the saving power of family and fellowship, man’s inhumanity to man, and even the multiplying effects of selfishness. These chapters show the social and economic crisis flooding the nation at the time, and the plight of the American farmer becoming difficult. The contrast between these chapters helps readers look at not just the storyline of the Joad family, but farmers during the time and also the condition of America during the Dust Bowl. Steinbeck uses these chapters to show that the story is not only limited to the Joad family,
Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath is a realistic novel that mimics life and offers social commentary too. It offers many windows on real life in midwest America in the 1930s. But it also offers a powerful social commentary, directly in the intercalary chapters and indirectly in the places and people it portrays. Typical of very many, the Joads are driven off the land by far away banks and set out on a journey to California to find a better life. However the journey breaks up the family, their dreams are not realized and their fortunes disappear. What promised to be the land of milk and honey turns to sour grapes. The hopes and dreams of a generation turned to wrath. Steinbeck opens up this catastrophe for public scrutiny.
In conclusion the Grapes of Wrath is a literary masterpiece that portrays the struggles of man as he overcomes the adversity of homelessness, death, and the wrath of prejudice. Steinbeck fully explores each faucet coherently within the boundaries of the Joad family’s trials and
The novel Grapes of Wrath was one of the first monumental American stories because of the setting, which is the great depression. It followed the working class of America, which at the time it came out was when the working class was becoming more common then the upper class. The whole point of the novel was to show the people who were the workers of America’s economy struggle deeply. The readers of the text appreciated the realistic factors of the novel, and Tom Joade was a great example for those who wanted to help others. He was someone who only cared about others safety, and even though he had done some bad things in the past, he was still a caring man. The moral behind Tom’s character is that even if someone has a troubled past, it does not matter about their past, but instead it matters about their actions in the present.
Through such hardships as the Depression, the Dust Bowl summers, and trying to provide for their own families, which included the search for a safe existence, we find the story of the Joad's. The Joad's are the main family in John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath, which he created to give voice to the hundreds of families that found themselves at their absolute rock bottom during the Great Depression of the 20th Century in America.
In the Government camp, Steinbeck's values are shown on a larger scale. With the cooperation of hundreds of men and women, a suitable camp is formed in the midst of a corrupt society. The people act as one; they elect their own leaders, and obey the laws that are set. A set of laws that must be followed because without the laws, there would be no group. Allowing the group to prosper from all the individuals. In one scene there are three people who try to cause trouble at a dance. With the unison of the camp, the outcasts are surrounded and discarded without any ruckus. Steinbeck shows that with a group, things can get done.
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck is considered a classic novel by many in the literary field. The trials and tribulations of the Joad family and other migrants is told throughout this novel. In order to gain a perspective into the lives of "Oakies", Steinbeck uses themes and language of the troubling times of the Great Depression. Some of these aspects are critiqued because of their vulgarity and adult nature. In some places, The Grapes of Wrath has been edited or banned. These challenges undermine Steinbeck's attempts to add reality to the novel and are unjustified.
In this novel Steinbeck set forth with the intention of raising awareness to the general public of the difficulties and injustices these migrants faced during this period in time. It exposed the methods of the California farmer to use the migrants in order to lower their costs and make their profit margin higher. How they starved and cheated the poor, working man, in order to keep him desperate for food and too weak to protest. Above all, it showed everyone that these “damn Okies” were all simply men, women and children, no different from anyone else, just poorer. They were human beings with feelings and not the uncivilized beasts they were portrayed as at the time. Steinbeck portrays the “Okies” in a way no one before him had, and also managed to keep their story true to life. He did this by mainly using dialect, and wrote the “Okie” dialect just as it was spoken, breaking the lines of proper grammar and spelling. If he was concerned with such things it would have ruined the personality of the characters. His unique writing style to capture the atmosphere of these people and the era is evident in this excerpt from his book:
The ending of The Grapes of Wrath maintains its historical accuracy by enforcing the idea of the women being the force that holds the family together. From even the beginning of this text we can see that Ma Joad is an incredibly strong ch...
The Grapes of Wrath was a book written by John Steinbeck and portrayed life during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. It followed a family of Oklahoma tenant farmers as they traveled westward to California while undergoing dark and gruesome circumstances. One theme in this story is altruism and another is the greed of the banks. Though these two themes heavily contrast, the migrants in this story understood in order to survive they would need to help each other out. Steinbeck really puts these two themes against each other, but he also shows how altruism can keep you going in a time of need.
In John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath, the Joad family and the changing world in which they live is portrayed from a naturalistic point of view. Steinbeck characterizes the Joads and their fellow migrants as simple, instinct-bound creatures who are on an endless search for paradise (Owens 129). The migrants and the powers which force them to make their journey--nature and society--are frequently represented by animals. The Joads, when they initially leave home, are a group of simplistic, animal-like people who barely understand or even realize their plight, but as the story progresses, they begin to grow and adapt to their new circumstances. They evolve from a small, insignificant group of creatures with no societal consciousness into a single member of a much larger family--society.
In literature as in life, people often find that they must make difficult choices in order to survive. The reasons behind their decisions and the results of their subsequent actions affect our opinion of them. In the Grapes of Wrath, written by John Steinbeck, the author portrayed situations where two main characters became involved. The nature of their choices, the reasons behind their decisions, and the results that followed affected them greatly. However, the choices that they made were surmounted successfully. Ma Joad and Tom Joad are two strong characters who overcame laborious predicaments. Their powerful characteristics helped to encourage those that were struggling.
In the novel The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, a fictitious migrant family, the Joads, travel west in search of a new life away from the tragedies of the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma. Along the way, Steinbeck adds a variety of minor characters with whom the Joads interact. Steinbeck created these minor characters to contrast with the Joad’s strong will power and to reflect man’s fear of new challenges, and to identify man’s resistance to change. Three minor characters who fulfill this role are Muley Graves, Connie Rivers, and the tractor driver.