Essays on Grapes of Wrath

Though operating in vastly different mediums, novelist John Steinbeck and filmmaker Preston Sturges were among the first American artists to explore philosophical solutions to the economic travesty that gripped the national psyche from 1929 to 1941. Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and Sturges’ “Sullivan’s...

Steinbeck’s novel “The Grapes of Wrath” has been the subject of much critical attention. Many of the novel’s detractors have concentrated their critiques not upon its literary failings, but rather its politics (Zirakzadeh). At the time of the novel’s publication and in the years since,...

A family functions like a grapevine; its coarse green vines intertwine from the dusty dirt that conceals the intricate network of roots to the first cluster of sweet grapes that grow in the hot California sun. Similar to the growth pattern of a grapevine, the...

While The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck and The Good Earth by Pearl Buck vary greatly in basic subject matter, their thematic content and general intent are strikingly similar. Both award-winning literary works in their own right, together they provide a unique insight into...

The indefatigable spirit of unity emerges as the one unfailing source of strength in John Steinbeck’s migrant worker classic The Grapes of Wrath. As the Joad family’s world steadily crumbles, hope in each other preserves the members, sense of pride, of courage, and of determination....

Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath, two novels published concurrently by John Steinbeck, both depict camaraderie between dust bowl migrants. The main characters in Of Mice and Men, George and Lennie, form a bond, while struggling to reach their goal, a small...

Chapter Twenty-Five is central to John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Besides containing the title of the book, this chapter clearly, forcefully, and elegantly drives home Steinbeck’s central message the injustice of life in the Depression-era American west. Without doubt one of Steinbeck’s strongest attributes...

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck introduces a family rooted in the leadership of men. The journey of hardship they endure, however, disintegrates this patriarchal control, leaving the women, Ma specifically, to take charge. As Pa falls behind, guilt-ridden for his lack of ability...

“Like William Faulkner and Willa Cather, John Steinbeck wrote his best fiction about the region in which he grew up and the people he knew from boyhood…” Paul McCarthy Steinbeck’s novels of the common people and the troubles that beset them have earned him the...

Depicting a world where the struggle to survive is elemental, two incisive narratives emerged to describe what life was like during the Dust Bowl. Timothy Egan’s The Worst Hard Time comprises a non-fiction description of life following actual figures and stories of people who had...

Historians have noted that works of literature often adopt the mood of the times in which they were written. It is thus not surprising that The Grapes of Wrath, written by John Steinbeck in the desperate nadir of the Great Depression, appears to be a...

Authors often use religious allusions to further the significance of a novel. It is when the reader recognizes and understands these influences that the importance of the novel can be truly understood. In John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck utilizes numerous Christian references to...

John Steinbeck’s novels The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men enable readers to capture a glimpse of the time of the Great Depression in the United States. In The Grapes of Wrath, the Joad family of Oklahoma, accompanied by thousands of other farming...

Nearly sixty years after John Steinbeck put pen to paper and wrote the series of San Francisco News articles that would later inspire The Grapes of Wrath, a renowned singer-songwriter from Freehold, New Jersey wrote a beautifully tragic song about the anguish of poverty and...

Steinbeck’s characterization of Jim Casy in The Grapes of Wrath stems from Emersonian thought, as expressed in Emerson’s essay “The Over-Soul”. Jim Casy forms beliefs based on the ideas presented in this piece, as evident through his action of quitting preaching, and his understanding that...

The novel The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck is about the social injustices that took place during the Dust Bowl migration in the western United States. It is composed of a third person view of a family, the Joads, who are kicked off their...

The unconventionally written intercalary chapters of Steinbeck’s novel, “The Grapes of Wrath”, are designed to show the readers a view of economic depression and social aspects of America during this time period. Steinbeck tells the reader about the situation through a macroscopic point of view,...

America: It’s Always Darkest before the Dawn’s Early Light “Anything seemed possible, likely, feasible, because I wanted everything to be possible” (Wright 72). Richard, the protagonist in Richard Wright’s Black Boy, always thinks optimistically. Likewise, an air of faith and hope drives John Steinbeck’s Joad...

John Steinbeck’s power as a story teller is rooted in his portrayal of the working people of America. Its Steinbeck’s understanding of the common man that gives his books universal appeal and keeps them in print all over the world. Rather than being a writer...

The Exposition of The Grapes of Wrath takes place in 1939 in Oklahoma when the dust bowl was occuring. It begins on the Joad family farm as they prepare to head to California before the conditions of the dust bowl get worse. The setting is...

Throughout the novel Grapes of Wrath, the author, John Steinbeck does an excellent job of portraying the struggles of life during the dust bowl. There were many reasons for these problems, including the stress of having to move a family from their homeland in search...

In the novel ‘Grapes of Wrath’ Steinbeck attempts to depict the hard conditions in which ranchers like the Joads needed to endure during the Dust Bowl. All through the novel, he centers around the Joad family and their adventure to California. Steinbeck had blended aims...

The Dust Bowl era of the 1930’s caused a large group of migrant families to move westward to California because of the harsh conditions they faced at their previous residences. This move not only caused problems with the families but also with the individuals who...

John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is a novel which explores and highlights the modern gender roles of the decade, and also portrays Steinbeck’s modernised ideology towards the traditional patriarchal system during a time of great change. The proletarian novelist displayed his ability to...

“The Grapes of Wrath” is an American realist novel written by John Steinbeck and published in 1939. This book is set during the great depression that occurred in the United States, focuses on the Joads, a poor family of tenant farmers driven from their Oklahoma...

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck describes how the economic situation in Oklahoma affected families in the 1940s, through the Joad family. Tom Joad, a man who was released of prison, makes his way back home, and finds that his families house is abandoned....

John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath follows a poor family of Oklahoma tenant farmers, the Joads, who migrate to California to pursue a better future. The novel’s protagonist, Tom Joad, is shown to be a man who likes to keep himself anchored to the present....

Transitioning from one place to another can sometimes be a hassle. For example, if you are moving houses you have to pack the moving car and may forget to pack your bed the most essential item to most. Looking at the comparison between a book...

Nourishment as a Symbol in The Grapes Of Wrath In The Grapes of Wrath, families traveling to California suffer starvation and exhaustion because of malnourishment. The Dust Bowl is a physical embodiment of their starvation. Possibly more important than the physical nourishment is the mental...

The Great Depression was the worst economic crisis in the history of the world. It started after the financial exchange crash of October 1929, which sent Wall Street into a frenzy and cleared out a huge number of investors. By 1933, when the Great Depression...