Joblessness In John Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath

Joblessness, poverty and hopelessness are something that a lot of people have personally gone through and John Steinbeck’s work, whether intentional or unintentional, can open people’s eyes to that side of living or help them realize the struggle that people have gone through. His groundbreaking work can get readers stuck in the book not being able to set it down only to get them to move on the next page, and when analyzing it, they can see the world through a whole new set of eyes, and get to experience the world on a whole different size and level. In his work, you can see the time frame at which he lived in and see how it might have affected him as it seeps through the pages and has a noticeable effect in his writing as a kid and transferred
The Great Depression had millions of people looking endlessly for a job as well as people selling their homes just to get a quick buck, and it seems to be a repetitive trend for John Steinbeck’s books to have a poor or close to it person or family looking for a job. In another of John Steinbeck’s books The Grapes of Wrath, Tom Joad goes back to one of his home in Sallisaw, Oklahoma to find it being completely destroyed by the Dust Bowl, and is forced to go look for work in California, but he finds himself working in bad conditions in a peach orchard. This book is similar to a lot of people living in that time; it was a struggle to find a good job in The Great Depression, or even a job at all. People are forced to work in bad conditions for a low wage, “Great Depression Survivor: I Worked for Shoes” Florence B. Cochran who would currently be 89 lived during The Great Depression and said that “Wages for men were about $1.00 and sometimes a meal or two per day. For women, the wages were $.50 per day” which was similar to the conditions in The Grapes of Wrath as Tom was forced to work for low wages and minimal food, as well as his wife who was forced to work in even worse conditions