Essay On The Grapes Of Wrath

Throughout John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath, many concepts appear that were noted in How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster. However, the three chapters of Foster’s how-to guide that most apply to Steinbeck’s novel were “It’s All About Sex…,” “Every Trip is a Quest (Except When It’s Not),” and “It’s More Than Just Rain or Snow.” On more than one occasion these concepts are hidden within the book, and two of them actually seem somewhat linked together. After reading between the lines, The Grapes of Wrath has an extremely intricate plot and many ulterior meanings. Foster’s book helps to solve these meanings and make it so that the novel can be completely understood.

The novel The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck is set in a time during the great depression, in a poor farming town where everyone is reliant on one another for their own survival. During a tough summer of farming due to dust suffocating large numbers of crops, families are struggling to survive. When the large companies that own the land realize it would be more profitable to evict the current residents and farm it all with large machinery many families are forced to leave their homes of many generations and travel halfway across the country to support their families. We see many examples of man’s inhumanity to man and greed throughout the course of this novel.

John Steinbeck uses symbolism to enrich his writing. Several of these symbols can be found in his book, The Grapes of Wrath. The Joad’s, a family from Oklahoma, are in search of a better life. They leave their home in journey to California because of the dust bowl. The symbols in the book are the dust, the turtle, names of people, and the grapes. These symbols give the reader an additional perspective of the book. Dust represents life and death. Dust makes a mess of things and leaves possessions under a mucky film. The farming in Oklahoma becomes difficult because the heavy winds uplift the soil and carry it great distances. Then the farmers are left with no soil to grow their crops. The Joad’s livelihood depends on the soil. If the

The Grapes of Wrath is set in the horrible stage of our American history, the Depression. Economic, social, and historical surroundings separate the common man of America into basically the rich and poor. A basic theme is that man turns against one another in a selfish pride to only protect themselves. For example, the landowners create a system in which migrants are treated like animals and pushed along from one roadside camp to the next. They are denied decent wages and forced to turn against their fellow scramblers to simply survive.

hether it be more day-to-day, or expanding over a long period of time, Tom, Casy, and Ma went through many personal struggles. These struggles are brought up in the book, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Steinbeck provides many examples of these three characters struggles. The book, The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, depicts the personal struggles of the migrant worker through the characters of Tom, Casy, and Ma.

land by the bank, which owned it because the drought from the Dust Bowl had

Lee To Kill a Mockingbird, a very interesting book that supplies the multiple personalities of very diverse characters whose actions symbolizes how sometimes people are judged unfairly, and in The Grapes of Wrath people do not receive any justice with the public. People are treated like animals in both these books and have a heavy emphasis on dehumanization through the violation of the simplest form of rights and recognition of what is suppose to be the law. People are denied the right to be a part of society in The Grape of Wrath due to discrimination because of poverty, and people are denied to be a part of society in To Kill a Mockingbird due to racism.

In the epic movie Grapes of Wrath, director John Ford depicted a saga of one family trying to survive the 1930’s. In watching this film, it helped me to understand the hardships of the American migrants. The characters showed unique traits and dealt with problems each in a different way.The Dust Bowl was an ecological and human disaster that took place in the southwestern Great Plains region, including Oklahoma. Misuse of land and years of sustained drought caused it. Millions of acres of farmland became useless, and hundreds of thousands of people were forced to leave their homes --many migrated to California.

After the Joad's were forced out of their homes they began the long journey west from Oklahoma to California. They have their struggles along the way losing both their grandpa and grandma along the way. "Pa called, 'We're there—we're in California!' They looked

In John Steinbeck’s fiction novel The Grapes of Wrath, the dustbowl renders farmland useless, so the Joad family embarks on a journey across the country, leaving their farm behind in Oklahoma to attempt to find work in California. Along the way, they encounter several characters facing hardships not unlike their own. Gradually, they extend their compassion to include these characters, allowing for a “widening circle of compassion”.

They got no family. They don’t belong no place. They come to a ranch to work up a stake and then go inta town and blow their stake”(Steinbeck 15). Lennie exclaimed “’With us it ani’t like that.’

In this novel, Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck concentrates on the depression of California farm life in the 1930's. A standout amongst the most vital things in the life is to have a friend, without friends

“And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quicklime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is a failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath” (Steinbeck 349). John Steinbeck, the author of The Grapes of Wrath, portrays the migrant’s resentment of the California land owners and their way of life and illustrates that the vagrants from Oklahoma are yearning for labor, provisions, and human decency. Similarly in To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee elucidates the concept that people should be treated with inclusive human dignity and be affected by good aspects rather than deleterious

In John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath, the supporting character Jim Casy is characterized as faithless. Casy is a former reverend of a church, and after re-encountering his old friend Tom Joad, the two have a conversation to catch up with each other. Casy states that the religious spirit is declining in his community, and he leaves his job because he does not believe that religion matters anymore. He starts using words he would not say as a preacher, and he justifies it: “maybe you wonder about me using bad words. Well, they ain’t bad to me no more. They’re jus’ words folks use, an’ they don’t mean nothing bad with ‘em”(32). This evidence reinforces the concept that due to the lack of religious spirit in Casy, he does not believe there is anything wrong with religious exclamations because the words are just common amongst people. Like Casy, people who do not believe that doing something is bad see nothing wrong with doing it. When young children find out that Santa Claus is not real, they start doing things against the rules unknown to others, contrary to when they believe that Santa is always watching them and that they always have to follow the rules. Also, Casy’s thoughts on religion change after leaving his job as a reverend. When the Joad family asks for a prayer in a time of hardship, the family calls upon Casy because he is a former preacher. But since Casy has left his religious duties, he has

Tom Joad returns home on parole, after four years behind bars for killing a man. Once home, he finds that his family had been kicked out of their farm due to foreclosure. Tom catches up with them on his Uncle John’s farm, and joins them as they travel to California. On the road, the Joads meet dozen of other migrant families suffering the misery of being homeless and without a job. Once in California, however, the Joads realize that it is not what they expected.