Grapes of wrath review and analysis

Introduction America was plunged up to their necks in the misery of the Great Depression. People’s savings instantly evaporated on what is known as Black Tuesday today. If that was not horrible enough for one to fathom; one should also know that the residents of the southern plains states had to deal with more than just depression. Ongoing droughts saw to it that crops failed year after year during these times causing dust storms to become quite ubiquitous. This was better known as the Dust Bowl. The Grapes of Wrath is a fictional story that casts and outlines as much truth about the Great Depression as Uncle Tom’s Cabin exposed the deplorable realities of slavery in the e1800’s. John Steinbeck’s book is so close to reality, the Joad family may as well have been a family that really did exist. Therefore, Steinbeck gets his point across very clearly.
The Emotional and Physical Suffering of the Okies The books first two chapters do a perfect job at explaining the many hardships. Chapter one serves as an introduction to the story; there is no dialogue. It only describes the setting. But among everything else described, it reveals the fact how farmers have to put handkerchiefs over their noses and mouths to protect themselves from the dust. It also describes that at nighttime the dust enters the houses and other buildings and ends up suffocating the residents. During the daytime, the farmers can only watch in misery as their crops are choked to death by the excessive dust clouds (2). The dust situation could easily be summed up here. "Houses were shut tight, and cloth wedged around doors and windows, but the dust came in so thinly that it could not be seen in the air, and it settled like pollen on the chairs and tables, on the dishes (3)." In chapter two, after the reader is introduced to Tom Joad, another ugly truth rears its head when Joad is surprised to learn that the majority of farmers are being evicted from their land due to the fact