The Grapes
of Wrath
John Steinbeck
INTRODUCTION
Critics have called John Steinbeck’s
masterpiece The Grapes of Wrath
propaganda, sentimental, and
obscene—but half a century later, we
are still moved by the story of the
Joads and the thousands like them who
lost their land in the midst of the Great
Depression and the Dust Bowl of the
mid-Thirties. Think about this
happening today?????????????
In an age of concern over the plight of
America’s farmlands, earth’s fragile
environment, and the growing problem
of pollution, The Grapes of Wrath is still
relevant. In an age when Third World
peoples are the “new Okies,” when
people step over the sleeping homeless
in our major cities, and the gap
between rich and poor widens, The
Grapes of Wrath is still relevant. The
movement from “I” to “we” (this
novel’s major theme) challenges every
new generation of readers.
VALUES
An appreciation for our common humanity
The need to work together to achieve a
common goal
The need for compassion and justice for the
oppressed
The importance of avoiding stereotypes and
labels
The need to share what we have with others,
especially the poor
VALUES
The importance of commitment to our
beliefs
A respect for our religious heritage and
that of others
The realization that change is part of
the human condition
The importance of caring about the
earth and our environment
An understanding of the role of
technology in society
CONTROVERSIAL NOVEL
When first published, religious leaders
denounced it as obscene.
Oklahomans resented the portrayal of
their citizens and their state.
Californians insisted they were not as
cruel as the picture Steinbeck painted
of them.
Many people called Steinbeck a
Communist.
SUPPORTERS
Believed his novel told the truth
and were concerned enough to
demand government action
As a novel of social protest, The
Grapes of Wrath was a great
success. As a movie, it is a
classic. In today’s catalog of
literature, it ranks as a timeless
work of art.
STRUCTURE
The novel is somewhat unusual in
structure. The general story of the dust
storms, the road west, shady business
practices, and the migrant camps is told
in chapters which alternate with the
more specific story of one particular
migrant family, the Joads. You will
receive a factual history along with a
fictionalized example of how the historic
events affected one family.
THE JOADS
The Joads represent all
migrants—and in fact all poor,
uneducated people—in 1930s
America.
KEY FACTS
full title · The Grapes of Wrath
author · John Steinbeck
type of work · Novel
genre · Epic; realistic fiction; social
commentary; PROTEST NOVEL
language · English
time and place written · Late May–late October
1938, Los Gatos, CA
NARRATOR
narrator · An anonymous, allknowing, historically aware
consciousness that is deeply
sympathetic, not only to the
migrants but to workers, the
poor, and the dispossessed
generally.
POINT OF VIEW
The narrative shifts dramatically between different points of
view. In some chapters the narrator describes events
broadly, summarizing the experiences of a large number of
people and providing historical analysis. Frequently, in the
same chapters, the narrator assumes the voice of a typical
individual, such as a displaced farmer or a crooked used-car
salesman, expressing that person's individual concerns.
When the narrator assumes the voice of an anonymous
individual, the words sometimes sound like what an actual
person might say, but sometimes they form a highly poetic
representation of the anonymous individual's thoughts and
soul. The chapters focusing on the Joad family are narrated
primarily from an objective point of view, representing
conversations and interactions without focusing on any
particular character. Here, the characters' actions are
presented as an observer might witness them, without
directly representing the characters' thoughts and
motivations. At certain points, however, the narrator shifts
and presents the Joads from an omniscient point of view,
explaining their psychologies, characters, and motivations in
intimate detail.
KEY FACTS
tone · Mournful, awed, enraged, sympathetic
tense · Mainly past
setting (time) · Late 1930s
setting (place) · Oklahoma, California, and
points along the way
protagonist · Tom Joad
MAJOR CONFLICT
The disastrous drought of the 1930s
forces farmers to migrate westward to
California, pitting migrants against
locals and property owners against the
destitute. Moreover, Tom Joad's story
dramatizes a conflict between the
impulse to respond to hardship and
disaster by focusing on one's own
needs and the impulse to risk one's
safety by working for a common good.
RISING ACTION
Tom is released from prison,
determined to mind his own
business; Tom encounters the
devastation of the Dust Bowl;
Casy presents Tom with his
philosophy of the holiness of
human beings in general; Tom
is drawn into the workers'
movement.
THEMES AND MOTIFS
THEMES
Man's inhumanity to man;
the saving power of family and fellowship;
the dignity of wrath; the multiplying effects
of altruism and selfishness
MOTIF
· Improvised leadership structures
MAIN THEMES AND IDEAS
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
RELIGION
TRANSCENDENTALISM
AGRARIANISM (AGRICULTURE)
COMMUNISM
ISOLATION AND LONELINESS
FAMILY AND THE EDUCATION OF
THE HEART
Title
The novel’s title is taken from
Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle
Hymn of the Republic” (second
stanza) with its militant spirit
that urges an oppressed group
to strive for victory over its
oppressors.
TITLE
Battle Hymn of the Republic
Julia Ward Howe
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of
wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift
sword:
His truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling
camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and
damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring
lamps:
His day is marching on.
TITLE – SYMBOLIC LEVEL
MIGRANTS CLUSTER TOGETHER
LIKE GRAPES, IN THEIR SHARED
MISERY AND ANGER (WRATH).
THEY SURVIVE PERSECUTION,
HARDSHIPS, AND EXPLOITATION
ONLY BECAUSE OF THEIR
INVINCIBLE COURAGE.
TITLE – RELIGIOUS LEVEL
REVELATION – THE EVIL PEOPLE
WHO FOLLOW AFTER BABYLON
(WICKEDNESS) WILL “DRINK OF THE
WINE OF THE WRATH OF GOD” AND
WILL BE TORMENTED. IN THE NOVEL,
THIS HAPPENS TO THE WEALTHY
LANDOWNERS IN CALIFORNIA,
WHOSE EXPLOITATION OF THE
MIGRANTS LEADS TO WORKERS’
PROTEST AND STRIKES.
TITLE – RELIGIOUS LEVEL
GRAPES ARE A SYMBOL OF
FRUITFULNESS, BOUNTY, AND
PROMISE FOR THE FUTURE.
GRAMPA SAYS, “GRAPES.
THERE’S ONE THING I AIN’T
NEVER HAD ENOUGH OF.”
SYMBOLS
The Grapes of Wrath
Christian symbolism
SYMBOLS
Rose of Sharon's
pregnancy;
the death of the Joads'
dog
The Tractors
A TIME OF CHANGE: MOTIFS IN
THE NOVEL
Think about the role of technology in your
life today????
Think about technology in manufacturing,
medicine, and information
accessibility????????
Steinbeck wrote this novel before the
computer revolution, but he was never an
anti-machine agrarian purist.
He saw machines as offering possibilities for
a better life for all people.
MACHINE AGE COMES TO OK
“The family met at the most important
place, near the truck.” chapter 10
The novel began with a poetic tribute to
the land and its people.
Chapter 2 – the red, living earth is
replaced by a roaring, huge red truck.
Every chapter but 4 contains
references to cars, trucks, or tractors
(all negative except for the above
passage).
MACHINE AGE COMES TO OK
Machines are replacing the land and
the farm as America becomes a nation
on the move.
What does it mean to be human in a
world that is becoming increasingly
mechanized?
Chapter 11 (the 1st paragraph) says the
new MACHINE MAN has no “wonder” in
his work, loses understanding of
relationship between people and land,
is contemptuous of the land and of
himself.-*
CHANGES
“Times are changing, mister, don’t you
know?” chapter 5
“Seems to me we don’t never come to
nothin’. Always on the way.” chap. 13
“Thus they changed their social life—
changed as in the whole universe only man
can change.”
“The Western land, nervous under the
beginning change. The Western States
nervous as horses before a thunder storm.
The great owners, nervous, sensing a
change, knowing nothing of the nature of the
change.” chapter 14
CONT.
“They’re gonna come a thing that’s
gonna change the whole country.”
chapter 16
“For here ‘I lost my land’ is
changed: a cell is split and from
its splitting grows the thing you
hate—’We lost our land’. . .This is
the beginning—from ‘I’ to ‘we.’”
chapter 14
FROM “I” TO “WE”
From the first pages of this novel, the
reader senses a change has come over
the land. The red earth is turned to
gray dust. The tenant farmers are
pushed off their land and onto Highway
66 by debts and greedy owners. We
see characters change, such as the
service station owner of chapter 13,
who begins as a whining worrier and
ends up showing compassion when the
Joads’ dog is run over, offering to
“bury ‘im out in the corn field.”30
CHANGE IN THE “FAMBLY”
One of the biggest changes is
in the “fambly.”
They have to leave their farm
and Oklahoma.
They have added Casey and
Wilsons to the “extended
family.”
Grampa dies.
Their pet dog is hit by a CAR.
CHANGES IN ATTITUDES
(JOADS)
Ma seems to be opening her
concept of family by allowing
Casy and the Wilsons in.
Tom seems to be reflecting on
Casy’s message of universal
compassion for fellow human
beings.
THEME – FROM “I” TO “WE”
Our only way to survive as a
human race is to shift from
total independence to interdependence.
John Steinbeck
RELIGION
Traditional, orthodox religion is seen in a
negative light since it encourages individuals
to remain isolated and self-centered. Uncle
John is preoccupied with guilt over his role
in the death of his wife; a migrant woman
sees everything in terms of sin and
punishment. Casey abandons orthodox
religion in hopes of finding a deeper
awareness of life and the universe. The
understanding that he finally achieves is not
“anti-religion,” but rather a way of translating
religion into responsible, humane action.
Christian Symbolism
The Joads – oppressed, homeless group (Israelites)
in search of the Promised Land
Jim Casy – withdrawn from the church as Christ
withdrew from the old religion
Casy went into the wilderness like Jesus to figure
out something and form a new set of beliefs based
on love and unity among humans
Casy has the same initials as Christ, feels the same
zest for teaching, gives himself as a sacrifice when
Tom is about to be arrested, and is killed in the
middle of a river as in the biblical crossing over
Jordan.
Christ’s last words before dying were: “Father
forgive them; they know not what they do.” Casy’s
last words were: “You fellas don’t know what you’re
doin.”
Biblical Imagery
The novel’s three sections
(drought, journey, and California)
correspond to the Israelites’
oppression in Egypt, the exodus,
and the sojourn in the land of
Canaan.
Instead of peace and prosperity,
the Joads are met with hunger and
violence in California. They never
get the “promised land.”
Rose of Sharon
Rose of Sharon’s name comes from “I
(Christ) am the rose of Sharon and the lily of
the valley.” “This thy stature is like to a palm
tree and thy breasts to clusters of grapes.”
(Canticles 2:1 and 7:7)
Christians believe that Christ gives himself,
body and blood, in the form of bread and
wine.
Rose of Sharon truly gives of herself to bring
life to the dying man, who would die without
the nourishment. Christ says, “I am the
Bread of Life.” (John 6:35)
Irony
Uncle John puts Rose of Sharon’s
stillborn child in an old apple crate and
floats it downstream and says, “Go
down and tell’em.”
Moses is the baby in the basket in the
Bible, and the irony is that he saved his
people but the infant cannot tell them
because he is dead. Think about the
connection between the actions that
have caused the infant’s death and
selfishness.
Theme
One of Steinbeck’s major themes (Of
Mice and Men also) is humankind’s
search for the Promise Land, a Garden
of Eden, “flowing with milk and honey.”
Concerning Tom and the snake, the
devil took the form of a serpent in the
Garden of Eden in Genesis. The snake
here is an omen that California will not
be a Paradise for them.
TRANSCENDENTALISM
When Casy says that “maybe all men got one
big soul ever’body’s a part of,” he argues
that human kind as a whole is more
important than any one individual. Casy
goes so far as to argue that perhaps there is
no sin, that everything people do is “holy.”
Transcendentalists believe that a collective
unity of souls transcends or goes beyond the
individual soul. Casy comes to believe that
people discover life’s true meaning only
when they see their connection to other
people and learn to love them. Casy’s belief
is expressed in the growing sense of unity
among the migrants and other dispossed
people.
AGARIANISM
The novel reaffirms Thomas Jefferson’s
belief that “those who labor in the earth
are the chosen people of God.”
Steinbeck emphasizes the importance
of a unified, sharing attitude between
humans and the earth. Tractors, land
corporations, and bankers reflect the
alienation and corruption that result
when landownership and farming
become a business. Migrants believed
that the land belongs to those who
work it; landowners allowed their lands
to lie dormant while other were hungry.
COMMUNISM
Throughout the novel, migrants are
wrongly accused of being “Reds,” or
Communists. There is no direct
evidence in the novel that a larger
political influence lies behind the
migrants’ attempts to organize and
protect themselves. Their ideal is NOT
communism, but a communalism or a
vague form of Christian socialism
where people work together for the
benefit of all.
ISOLATION & LONELINESS
Having been isolated in prison, Tom
continues through most of the novel as
a “loner.”
Casy feels that his life as a preacher
has isolated him from the real meaning
of life.
Muley Graves is “just wanderin’ around
like a. . .graveyard ghost.”
Uncle John is described as “the
loneliest. . .man in the world.”
Steinbeck uses the backdrop of the
larger isolation of the migrants as a
PUTTING THE PIECES
TOGETHER
Animals and machines are an important
part of the novel both at a literal and a
symbolic level. They unify the novel,
help us understand characters, and
point out major themes in the work.
Animals and characters: The people
are reduced to animal level by the
banks and owners; the people are close
to nature, one with the land they
farmed.
PUTTING THE PIECES
TOGETHER
In the novel, it is not MACHINES that
are evil, but the system that allows only
the wealthy to own the tractors.
The truck continues to break down and
is eventually stopped, as it the Joads.
Life would have been easier if farmers
had access to tractors. The problem
was that they had no money and could
not compete with farmers who did own
machines.
The Controversial Ending
Rose of Sharon, who so often in the
early chapters is a whining, selfish,
immature girl, grows into a woman like
her mother, who cares for others first,
no matter the cost.
Steinbeck’s purpose was to have the
readers see that even when the Joads
had nothing, life and suffering had
taught them to share what little they
had: in this case, Rose of Sharon’s
breast milk.