The Rural Class In John Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath

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.

Throughout the book, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, the physical transition of the Joad family from a small close-knit group of people living a quiet life on a farm in Oklahoma, corresponds with the internal transition of the concept of family. As the Joads leave their farm and journey westward, they no longer live just within their own isolated unit. Becoming involved with other families as they migrate, changes their focus and by the end of the book, the family members each reach out in their own way to embrace all of mankind as a family.

The dust bowl was a tragic time in America for so many families and John Steinbeck does a great job at getting up-close and personal with one family to show these tragedies. In the novel, “The Grapes of Wrath”, John Steinbeck employed a variety of rhetorical devices, such as asyndeton, personification and simile, in order to persuade his readers to enact positive change from the turmoil of the Great Depression. Throughout the novel, Steinbeck tells the fictional narrative of Tom Joad and his family, while exploring social issues and the hardships of families who had to endure the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. Steinbeck’s purpose was to challenge readers to look at

Social protest is defined as a strong reaction to another human’s actions. In the novel, The Grapes of Wrath, there are many instances of social protest that are shown in many different ways, whether they be blatantly obvious or extremely subtle, and John Steinbeck introduces many different characters to spark these reactions from the lower class through unfair practices. In particular, Steinbeck displays the differences in social classes to point out that institutions are responsible for the suffering that the Okies, the lower class, must go through.

Throughout Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck raises the issue of how the wealthy do not properly help the poor, and often treat them as invaders who should be left out on their own. He uses Grapes of Wrath to show how human nature causes people to ignore the plight of the poor when it is convenient for them. Throughout the novel, the “Okies” are often abused, and the wealthy commonly took advantage of their desperation to earn money to gain cheap labor. They were often paid unlivable wages, and forced away from any hospitable places solely because they were thought of as poor immigrants. This type of exploitation is a common occurrence throughout the novel. One example of this was when an employer set the wages for 20 cents an hour, which was far

In the novel, The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck depicts the stories of migrant families during the Dust Bowl, where dust covered plantations, resulting in barren fields with incapabilities to grow crops. Due to barren lands, landowners forced the farmers off the fields, which causes the farmers to lose all of the reasons to stay. Therefore, the farmers set out onto a new journey that will hopefully lead them to a place where life can restart. However, this journey is not a perfectly smooth path; on the journey, the farmers face various adversities. Out of the countless families, John Steinbeck highlights the Joad family, who suffers through numerous misfortunes on the way West, toward California. Through the Joad family, Steinbeck portrays the novel as a form of social protest by emphasizing the unjust treatments the families receive , the deterioration of the false allusions the families hold of the American Dream, and by suggesting a future revolt of the working class.

The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, pays homage to the critical impact the Great Depression had on dust bowl farmers. The growing demand for wheat products forced farmers to overgraze their property. This reduced the overall usefulness and biodiversity of the land, and attributed to the desertification of their establishments. With this, the once lush fields turned to dust, which blew away with the commencement of the severe drought in the early 1930s. Steinbeck utilizes the lives of the Joad family to depict how farmers were often forced to flee their homes in search of better jobs during this time period. Because of the stock market’s demise, no one was purchasing their crops. Banks were required to drive farmers out of their homes, as they could not afford to keep supporting them without profit. The agricultural devastation of the Dust Bowl intensified the economical impact of the Great Depression and added to the misery of the migrant workers.

Many devastating events occurred during the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. In The Grapes of Wrath, written by John Steinbeck, these injustices are outlined through the Joad Family’s migration to California. Steinbeck focuses on a key theme in Chapter five, the inability to escape hardship during the time of the Dust Bowl. Farmers, friends, and owners got caught in something much larger than themselves known as the “Monster”.

In the year of 1939, the Great Depression affected the lives of many located within the United States. This was a severe, and most widespread depression which affected people across the world. For the reason that there was a fall of the stock market, a drought ravaged the agricultural heartland. Those who were dependent on their farmland to provide for their families became imposed by coercion to retreat and re-locate their entire families. This migration was a struggle during this period because the lack of resources and money to survive. Among other elements, starvation and homelessness caused many to die at an early age. John Steinbeck's, The Grapes of Wrath, exhibits the Joad's, a family who undergoes the collapse of the agrarian

      In his novel The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck portrays the movement of a family of migrant workers, the Joads, from Oklahoma to California during the Great Depression. Steinbeck's novel, though it is surprisingly lacking in surface-level symbolism, was "conceived [on] simultaneous levels of existence, ranging from socio-economic determinism to transcendent spirituality" (DeMott, xiii). One of the many levels on which this novel can be read is as a parallel to the stories of Christ and the Exodus (Louis Owens, John Steinbeck's Re-Vision of America, quoted in DeMott, xiii). Steinbeck intertwines allegories based on these two stories throughout his novel. Through

The Grapes of Wrath written by John Steinbeck focus on the causes of the dust bowl and the people in it. Within the book chapter five clearly shows how the author displays his views of the banks and the tenant farmers. Steinbeck does this by using point of view, and selection of detail Within the chapter steinbeck focuses on the description of the tractor drivers hired by the new caretakers of the farm. He states how the drivers loved the machines in a completely different way then they loved the land like the previous farmers did.

During the 1939, when the Grapes of Wrath was first published, which received high praise and also had cruel criticism, where it was caused to be banned in some communities. The novel describes the social inequity that many Americans had when the Great Depression and Dust Bowl. The Steinbeck was award for his "realistic and imaginative writing, combining...sympathetic humor and keen social perception." Steinbeck was choosen for one of the top novels. "It became the bestselling book in America in 1939. By February, 1940 the novel was already in its eleventh printing, and more than 430,000 copies had been sold. That year, it remained one of the nation's top ten bestsellers." Even though it was one of the top selling books back then, it also has

     John Steinbeck wrote about what surrounded him. At the time he was writing, the nineteen-thirties, a great depression was plaguing the United States. Many people were out of work. Many farmers were losing their farms and homes. An extreme drought had also wrecked the farms of the Midwest and made them into what is now referred to as the "dust bowl". It was a terrible time to be poor, and most were. People died of malnutrition every day. In California, where Steinbeck resided, migrant workers dominated the workforce. Thousands traveled from all around to pick fruit in the farms of the Salinas Valley for minuscule wages. Thousands more could not find suitable

The premise of the popular novel by John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath has to do with the Great Depression, and, more specifically has to do with westward migration. The Joad family is looking for a better life by moving to California from their reclaimed farm in Oklahoma. However, they were not alone. Many families were moving out west in hope of opportunities that were not there. There is a lot of irony involved in this story such as the concept of the promised land, Casey’s death, and Grandpa’s death and the events following. In Steinbeck’s popular novel, The Grapes of Wrath, there is much irony involved in the characters, setting, and events.

1)The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck uses the story of the Joad family to portray the struggle of thousands of Dust Bowl farmers. Steinbeck tracks the Joad family with long chapters with short, depressing , and captures the westward movement of migrant farmers in the 1930s as they flee drought and industry.