Preview

Grapes of Wrath and of Mice and Men: Character Study

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
984 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Grapes of Wrath and of Mice and Men: Character Study
Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men: Character Study

The American Novelist, John Steinbeck was a powerful writer of dramatic stories about good versus bad. His own views on writing were that not only should a writer make the story sound good but also the story written should teach a lesson. In fact, Steinbeck focused many of his novels, not on average literary themes rather he tended to relay messages about the many hard truths of life in The United States. Upon winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962 the
Swedish academy introduced him by saying "He had no mind to be an unoffending comforter and entertainer. Instead, the topics he chose were serious and denunciatory…" This serious focus was not exempt from his two works "The Grapes of Wrath" and "Of Mice and Men". "The Grapes of Wrath" has been recognized by many as "the greatest novel in American History" and it remains among the archetypes of American culture. Although "Of Mice and Men" may not have received as much fanfare as the other it is still a great classic that was recently made into a motion picture.

The focus of "The Grapes of Wrath" Is one family, the Joads, who has been kicked off their Oklahoma farm and forced to move to California to look for work. The story has historical significance as it is true that many families were forced, in the same way as the Joads, to leave their homes to look for work during the depression. It is in this fact that one can see how Steinbeck 's intention in "The grapes of Wrath" was to depict the hardships people went through during an actual event in American history. Perhaps the most solemn message in this novel was the poor treatment of the dispossessed families as they reached California. In "Of Mice and Men" the reader is presented with a story that takes place in the same setting of "The Grapes of Wrath" This story details the hardships of two traveling companions while they are working at a ranch in California.

The common thread between these

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    found out later that he had been taken to a work camp, but that they could send food…

    • 1348 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    This action caused drastic emotional changes in the lives of everyone. Many of the ones who were being thrown off did not agree with what was happening. Many argued, “… it’s our land. We measured it and broke it up. We were born on it, and we got killed on it, died on it. Even if it’s no good, it’s still ours”(33). Once thrown off many grew sick both physically and emotionally, some even died leaving others to suffer even more. Although the migration to California caused many families to suffer it helped them by creating that unity among all of them during…

    • 4894 Words
    • 20 Pages
    Better Essays
  • 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
  • Good Essays

    In chapter thirty of The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck highlights the most destitute moment of the Joad family during their exodus to California and the transformation of many characters. Steinbeck opens the chapter by describing the flood is taking over the boxcar. Pa urges other men to build an embankment because Rose of Sharon begins to experience labor. While the men work on building the embankment, the cotton tree is uprooted, cascades into the embankment and destroys it. Steinbeck continues to show the Joads’ struggle to overcome the hardships as Pa goes back into the box car, and Mrs. Wainwright informs him that Rose Sharon has delivered a stillborn child. The Joads send Uncle John to bury the child. Because the water level keeps increasing,…

    • 518 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Grapes of Wrath is the story of a family that has embarked on a mythical…

    • 196 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    John Steinbeck is an American novelist and is considered also a socialist. He was born in February 27, 1902, in Salinas, California. He dropped out college and tried to work as a manual laborer but failed. Later he began to be a successful writer. His novel The Grapes of Wrath is a prize-winning novel that portrays the plight of rural laborers during the Great Depression. In this novel, both Steinbeck’s wrath and optimism are woven. His sympathy towards the migrant workers and sense of outrage are well-portrayed in the novel. This research paper will handle in detail how the novel’s state of anger is prevailed as well as the novel’s different…

    • 112 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Over the course of a student’s life under the American education system, they will read at least two books by California writer and possible communist, John Steinbeck. The longer, sadder, and more proletarian book, Grapes of Wrath, tells the tale of the great migration of Midwestern farmers traveling to California during the 1930s. Grapes of Wrath was not Steinbeck’s first venture into the tragedies that faced migrant farmers once they reached California. He had previously composed an article titled Starvation Under the Orange Trees in 1938 which detailed the hardships that migrant farmers faces in California. Steinbeck uses these two works to describe the atrocities that migrants’ faces and place blame on landowners and corporations and declare…

    • 1389 Words
    • 6 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

    Grapes of Wrath

    • 545 Words
    • 3 Pages

    We as Americans have seen our share of violence whether it is first hand, through the media, or in history books. We have seen the pain and struggle that these people must go through in order to survive. This novel, The Grapes of Wrath, relates to some of the many times of violence and cruelty that this America has seen.…

    • 545 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Dust Bowl Odyssey

    • 921 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Jobs and food were scarce, and the migrants faced prejudice and hostility from the Californians, who labeled them "Okies." These workers and their…

    • 921 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    John Steinbeck grew up during the Great depression and looked around him and knew one day all of this would be inspiration for the books he would write later in life. John Steinbeck was an American author who gave a permanent look of what America looked like during the Great depression.…

    • 764 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Jbky

    • 1131 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Steinbeck’s 1939 epic tale of the Joad family’s journey from Oklahoma to California has imbedded itself as a vital part of the American Literature canon. This is a selection not only for you to enjoy, but also for you to evaluate as a representation of an America still recovering from the Great Depression.…

    • 1131 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    home reading report

    • 2181 Words
    • 9 Pages

    John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. (February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939), East of Eden (1952) and the novella Of Mice and Men (1937). As the author of twenty-seven books, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books, and five collections of short stories, Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.…

    • 2181 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    post colonial literature

    • 3877 Words
    • 11 Pages

    Although the novel initially generated only lukewarm critical and commericial reception, it has since become highly acclaimed and is widely recognised as McCarthy’s masterpiece.…

    • 3877 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Powerful Essays