Refugees In John Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath

Whether you agree with it or not The Grapes of Wrath is one of the best pieces of literature in American history. This can be attributed to the fact that the Grapes of Wrath has characters that readers can easily connect with. Another reason the Grapes of Wrath is so popular is because it really shows the life of a family during the great depression. Nowadays when families think they are poor it is because they are living paycheck to paycheck, which nowadays is poor. But this novel shows what it use to mean to be poor. One of the main ways it shows this is by showing how much the characters need to move just to get jobs and get by. In this novel it shows the characters becoming refugees in their own country. Steinbeck did this by showing how
The reason they were on the move so much was because they had to constantly either move away from trouble or so they were able to get jobs and survive. This directly parallels many of the issues facing refugees and further shows that they are refugees inside of their own country. This is very apparent during their track across the nation to get to California. During the track moving was everything, they needed to keep moving and not stop unless an opportunity presented itself. This was made apparent after Grandma’s death "I was afraid we wouldn' get acrost," she said. "I tol' Granma we couldn' he'p her. The fambly had ta get acrost. I tol' her, tol' her when she was a-dyin'. We couldn' stop in the desert. There was the young ones—an' Rosasharn's baby. I tol' her." She put up her hands and covered her face for a moment. "She can get buried in a nice green place," Ma said softly. "Trees aroun' an' a nice place. She got to lay her head down in California." (SteinBeck 228) The family was so desperate to keep moving and get across as fast as possible that they couldn’t even stop be burry their dead grandmother. This is really sad if you stop to think about it, grandma died they just kind of did nothing at first, because they couldn’t. This shows that the Joads had no time to do anything that didn’t immediately help them survive, much like most
In many cases for the Joads they were treated very unkindly and in a way that would never happen to people that were from the area they were trying to be apart of.
““Where you think you're goin'?" He thrust a red face near to Tom's face. “ (Steinbeck 279). This is how the Joads were being treated by the people from within their own country, by who should be their allies, the people that should want them to succeed. This is how refugees are treated in most cases, like they are going to somehow hurt you. In both cases the refugees and the Joads all they want to do is get by and not hurt anybody the majority of the time. But in both cases they aren’t allowed to based simply on where they are