Preview

Dirty Thirties In John Steinbeck's Grapes Of Wrath

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
463 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Dirty Thirties In John Steinbeck's Grapes Of Wrath
Grapes of Wrath is the story of the Joad family and the hardships they endured during the Dustbowl or “Dirty Thirties”. Steinbeck consistently both condemns and celebrates the United States during this time period. He celebrates the family persevering through seemingly insurmountable obstacles as well as unions banding together for a common goal, protecting each other and fighting for their rights. He also condemns Hooverville(s) with its squalid conditions, the hostility of its inhabitants, as well as the harsh migrant lifestyle.
The novel starts with Tom Joad making his way back to his family’s farm after serving four years in state prison for manslaughter. Tom discovers his old home is vacant and learns that his family is about to move

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Grapes of Wrath remains one of the greatest angry books. Its dominating idea is that of imminent, overwhelming anger. Steinbeck, as a responsible writer, was concerned with exposing a problem in all its complexity instead of arguing a single solution. In writing his novel, he decided to depict for the readers the insult and deprivation suffered by people like the Joads. To present the story of simple human beings while providing at the same time the social documentation. Steibeck's anger of the whole situation turns into a book to show an example of the fate of Joads and their problems while moving with the mass to…

    • 108 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The author, John Steinbeck, of “The Grapes of Wrath,” wrote this masterpiece of a novel in 1939. Steinbeck who utilized his books to write about the lives of the most downtrodden people of society during those times, used “The Grapes of Wrath,” to depict and fixate on the lives of workers migrating from Oklahoma to California during the early part of the 1930s (Steinbeck-Introduction Section). In Steinbeck’s story “The Grapes of Wrath,” he breaks the chapters down into three parts. Chapters one through eleven describes a terrible drought, called the Dust Bowel, which had ravaged an area of land known as the Southern Great Plains located between the western parts of Oklahoma to the panhandle areas of Texas. The area received its name because…

    • 342 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    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).…

    • 1056 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The crash of the stock market hit in 1929 leading America in a downward spiral; Wall Street loses countless investors, unemployment rates skyrocket, and the devastating American Dust Bowl strikes the Great Plains. Making ends meet seems virtually impossible for the majority of individuals in the United States, especially for those affected by both the economic crisis and the Dust bowl. In John Steinbeck's realistic novel, The Grapes of Wrath, intercalary chapters are implemented throughout the work to adumbrate the difficult lifestyle farmers have to endure due to the Great Depression and the American Dust Bowl.…

    • 96 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    During The Great Depression the Dust Bowl started and affected many of the rural poor people. Farmers were making an abundance of crops so they cut dawn all the trees to make even more. This did not help the farmers but destroy their farms. An abundance of top soil was pushed up and created a big black cloud started to head towards the farms and soon the Dust Bowl started. In the book Grapes Of Wrath by John Steinbeck, the Joad family was deeply affected by the Dust Bowl. The family was farmers so being hit by the storm put them into poverty and even caused them to lose their home. When the Dust Bowl came the Joads farm was covered in dust and…

    • 773 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, Steinbeck presents the migrant farmers of the Dustbowl Migration to the general public through the Joad family; a family whom faces discrimination and blind hate from the Californians. Steinbeck touches the subject of personal, social, and economic interconnection during that time period through the action of the Joads and the people they encounter.…

    • 1107 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Dust Bowl that occurred in the 1930’s along with the Great Depression was one of the lowest times in American history. The novel, The Grapes of Wrath written by John Steinbeck, takes place during this time period. The Grapes of Wrath is told from the perspective of the Joads, who are coerced to leave their home and farm in Oklahoma. The novel documents their journey traveling from Oklahoma to California. The protagonist in this novel, Tom Joad, is first introduced in Chapter 2 when he has to hitch a ride with a truck driver in order to return to his family. From the moment Tom was introduced till the last time he occurs in the novel, one should notice a significant change in his actions and behaviors. Tom Joad goes through a journey of self-change, which in the end turns him into a better person than he was before.…

    • 710 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The novel, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, is a classic American novel about the Great Depression. The novel is written in incalerarly chapters and is about the struggles that migrant workers faced during this time. When Steinbeck was writing his novel, he did lots of research and the struggles he writes about are from real stories. As we look closely at the chapters individually, from the syntax and diction, we are able to conclude the overall purpose of the novel. Steinbeck’s use of parallelism and diction, in chapter 5, supports his message that the farmers were against something they could not take down alone.…

    • 1275 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Dust Bowl of the 1930’s, forced many families to move to different parts of the country, devastated the livelihoods of farmers; the relief was The New Deal. "Dust Bowl" was a term born in the hard times from the people who lived in the drought-stricken region during the great depression. The "Dust Bowl Days" also known as the "Dirty Thirties" took their toll on the people of this region of the country with the many extremes of weather: blizzards, tornadoes, floods, droughts, and dirt storms. This disaster occurred in the area of The Great Plains, which covered parts of Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. It occurred during the years of 1933 to 1939. The uprooting, poverty, and human suffering caused during this period is notably shown in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. So the question is how did it happen? What was the relief?…

    • 686 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    John Steinbeck wrote in his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west- from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out. Carloads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless – restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do – to lift, to push, to pull, to pick, to cut – anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying for work, for food, and most of all for land." This, just a small excerpt from Steinbeck's novel, depicts the hardships and struggles that farmers faced during…

    • 1117 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    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 the harsh realities around them for “the purpose of improvement”. The rhetorical strategies used in the “Grapes of Wrath” elicit a deeper understanding from its readers for the hardships these migrants faced and helped them to fight for a better way. (John Steinbeck, "Banquet Speech," Nobel Foundation, http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1962/steinbeck-speech.html, Accessed 30 August 2013.)…

    • 1767 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The novel, The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck was published in 1939 and seemingly took place in the time during the great depression. After reading the book, I can think that the main point of the novel would be to show the impact of a community. In the novel, we see all of the hardship the people go through; however, in the sections when the people of kin come together as one, it seems that things turn up. Without one, they seem at the mercy of the others around them. It just would seem that Steinbeck put lots of emphasis on the point that as one with others around them, the Joad family was able to overcome any obstacle they came upon.…

    • 612 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Dust Bowl Odyssey

    • 921 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The Grapes of Wrath recounts the story of the Great Depression in Southwest America. By the mid-1930s, the drought had destroyed multitudes of farm families, and America had fallen into the Great Depression. Unable to pay their mortgages or invest in the kinds of industrial equipment now required, many Dust Bowl farmers were forced to leave their land. Without employment, thousands of families traveled to California in hopes of finding new means of survival. But the farm country of California quickly became overcrowded with the migrant workers.…

    • 921 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Grapes Of Wrath

    • 962 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The Grapes of Wrath, describes the difficulty of migrant labors during the Great Depression. Written by, John Steinbeck, this novel went on to receive many awards. Generally viewed as Steinbeck's best and most striving novel, The Grapes of Wrath was published in 1939. Stating the story of an expelled Oklahoma family and their fight to form a reestablished life in California at the peak of the Great Depression, the book captures the sorrow and anguish of the land throughout this time-period. The bank forecloses on the Joads land, so they decide to move west in search of new jobs. Though the Joads travel west in expectations of creating a restored life, the American Dream avoids them, their journey to California proves to be sorrowful and disappointing.…

    • 962 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Grapes of Wrath

    • 2467 Words
    • 10 Pages

    The Grapes of Wrath is an American allegory of human suffering that takes place in a dark period of the history of our nation, brought on by the Dust Bowl migration from Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas, during the 1930s and the depression. People experience this tragedy in different ways. The landowner who had to remove the families was torn in turmoil; Steinbeck writes, “ Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that…

    • 2467 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays