AMERICAN DREAM IN JOHN STEINBECK’S THE GRAPES OF WRATH

Project submitted in

partial fulfillment of the

MASTER OF ENGLISH
Submitted by

K. KAMALI

(Reg No: 12018P02007)

Under the guidance of

Mrs. M. B. RABIYATHUL BASIRIYA, M.A., M.Phil., B.Ed.,

Assistant Professor

Department of English

POST GRADUATE & RESARCH DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

KRISHNASAMY COLLEGE OF SCIENCE, ARTS & MANAGEMENT FOR WOMEN

(Accreditated with Grade ‘B’ by NAAC)

ANAND NAGAR, S.KUMARAPURAM, NELLIKUPAM MAIN ROAD, CUDDALORE – 607 109

MARCH 2020

Mrs. M.B.RABIYATHUL BASIRIYA, M.A., M.Phil., B.Ed.,

Assistant Professor
PG & Research Department of English
Krishnasamy College of Science, Arts & Management for Women
Anand Nagar, S.Kumarapuram, Nellikuppam Main Road, Cuddalore – 607 109
_____________________________________________________________
CERTIFICATE
This is to certify that the project entitled, AMERICAN DREAM IN JOHN
STEINBECK’S THE GRAPES OF WRATH submitted to Thiruvalluvar University in partial
fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the degree of Master of Arts in English is a
record of original research work done by K.KAMALI (Reg. No: 12018P02007), during the
period of her study 2018-2020, in the Department of English, Krishnasamy College of Science,
Arts & Management for Women, Anand Nagar, S.Kumarapuram, Nellikuppam Main Road,
Cuddalore, under my supervision and guidance. The project has not previously formed the basis
for the award of any degree, diploma, associate ship, fellowship, or other similar titles.

DATE:

HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT GUIDE AND SUPERVISOR

Submitted for the viva-voice held on _________________________

EXTERNAL EXAMINER

i
K.KAMALI
Reg. No. 12018P02007
Department of English
Krishnasamy College of Science, Arts & Management for Women
Anand Nagar, S.Kumarapuram, Nellikuppam Main Road, Cuddalore - 607 109
________________________________________________________________________

DECLARATION

I K.KAMALI hereby declare that the project entitled, AMERICAN DREAM IN JOHN
STEINBECK’S THE GRAPES OF WRATH submitted to Thiruvalluvar University for the
degree of Master of Arts is the record of work carried out by me during the period from 2019-
2020 under the guidance of Mrs. M.B. Rabiyathul Basiriya, M.A., M.Phil., B.Ed., and has not
formed the basis for the award of any degree, diploma, associate ship, fellowship, titles in this or
any other university or other similar institution of higher learning.

GUIDE AND SUPERVISOR K.KAMALI

(Reg. No. 12018P02007)

ii

CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT iv

ABSTRACT v

CHAPTER

I INTRODUCTION 6

II AMERICAN DREAM IN JOHN STEINBECK’S

THE GRAPES OF WRATH xx

III CONCLUSION XX

WORKS CITED XX

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
 I thank the almighty, for showering his kindness and blessing on me to complete this
dissertation successfully. I am grateful to our management for providing all the necessary
facilities in our college.

It gives me a great pleasure to express my deep sense of thanks and gratitude to our
principal, Dr. (Mrs) G. Nirmala M.Sc., M.Phil., Ph.D., PGDCA, who has given me a fine
atmosphere throughout the dissertation work.

I thank Mrs. A. Sivajothi, M.A., M.Phil, B.Ed., Head of the Department, PG &
Research Department of English, who gave me encouragement and support in all possible ways.

My heart takes pride and happiness to extend my sincere gratitude to Research

Supervisor Mrs. M.B. Rabiyathul Basiriya, M.A., M.Phil., B.Ed., Assistant Professor,
Department of English, for her keen interest on me at every stage of my research. Her timely
suggestion with kindness, enthusiasm and dynamism has enabled me to complete my
dissertation.

At the outset, I take pleasure to extend my sincere thanks to the staff members,
Mrs. E. Septima, Mrs. K. Annapurany, Mrs. K. Radha Devi, and librarian Mrs.
V. Arulmozhi for their moral support.

I am grateful to the Central Library Cuddalore for all the resources provided upon by
which this work has been done.

I am bound to express my sincere and heartfelt thanks to my beloved parents and friends,
who always stood up for me to complete this dissertation more successfully.

iv

ABSTACT
The first chapter discusses about the origin of American literature and place of Steinbeck in

American literature. John Steinbeck as an American Modernist begins by identifying his problem

literary placement with in academic and then position. John Steinbeck was a writer who created

memorable stories and deeply cared about people, particularly the dispossessed and the

persecuted.

The second chapter discusses about the American dreams of the North American people.

Steinbeck portrays the human existence. “The Grapes of Wrath” describes how the family must

expand and be generous to more people in time of social strife to accommodate for other’s needs.

The novel illustrated the effects of rapid industrialization within the American society of the

1930’s, supporting a complex economic system that provided both benefits and liabilities to

those living in this period of change.

The third chapter is concluded with the Joad family breaks their tradition of farming and

moves to California. Steinbeck described his own expression about migrations in this novel. He

has a deep understanding of human nature. His focus and attention on poor laborers .He has

exposed the inhuman tactics of the communist in his novel.

CHAPTER-I
 INTRODUCTION

After World War I, drama, poetry, fiction, and criticism took shape in the years

before, during, and after World War I. The eventful period that followed the war left its

imprint upon books of all kinds. Literary forms of the period were extraordinarily varied and

in drama, poetry, and fiction the leading authors tended toward radical technical

experiments. 

The history of the American dream can be traced back to 17th century, when the

puritans came to the America and tried to gain their religious freedom. In 1630, John Winthrop

delivered a speech “City upon a hill” to the other puritan settlers who travelled with him to

Massachusetts (Kiger, The Origins). It is true that he didn't describe his belief as a dream; he

still talked about an ideal nation that gives all the people with equal opportunities to

become successful through using their greatest efforts. 

As time moved forward, the American dream slowly changed inside the minds of

North American people. During the American Revolution, the Founding Fathers of 

America believed that the American dream should be described as a natural right that

everyone should have so in 1776, Thomas Jefferson and other authors of The Declaration

of Independence defined the American Dream  as "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness"

(Jefferson). 

During the mid- to late-1800s, the American news and literature began to use "the

American Dream" extensively (Kiger, the Origin). These two words were usually related to the
ambitious Americans who moved to the West and the Europeans who came to the United States

to look for better living conditions. Before early 1900s, the American Dream also widely used

to describe the promotion of people's social classes and the idea of becoming wealthy (Kiger,

The Origin). In 1931, Adams published his Epic of America, and the American

Dream continued to thrive in the early 1900s. 

The Great Depression crashed the American Dream during early 1930s by taking

away Americans' wealth and making them homeless. Many American people were thrown

out off their homes and could only make living by begging. With such a pessimistic

economic situation, the American people couldn't regain their American Dream until

Franklin D. Roosevelt became in charge and tried to save the country through the New Deal

(5-6). 

He believed that the American Dream could be saved with the support of the

government and increase of the job opportunities. With the increase of working population,

the American economy started to recover from the crisis and the American Dream and did.

Besides high employment rate, Franklin D. Roosevelt also tried to save the American

economy and to improve people's lives by passing 1934 National Housing Act which

increased the building of houses (American Radio Works). As a result, owning a house later

also became an essential part of the modern American Dream. 

After World War II, the American Dream fully recovered because the

United States became the strongest and the most flourishing nation in the

world. According to a website of American Public Media, "By 1960, roughly 60

percent of Americans owned homes, double the percentage in the 1930s.

Unemployment was low and the economy was booming. The United States had a

lot to look forward to in its material future" (77). 

Although the American population was merely six percent of the total population

of the world. They utilized one-third of the all the resources and products on the Earth.

People had no worries with their futures and were convinced that their diligence would

bring them more wealth and happiness. With the booming economy, the American

Dream was also exuberant and undoubted in people's minds (56). So, the typical

American Dream in the 1960s was usually described as money, employment, a happy

family, and a decent house with the stereotypical "white picket fences". 

The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States, the set of ideals

democracy, rights, liberty, opportunity and equality in which freedom includes the opportunity

for prosperity and success, as well as an upward social mobility for the family and

children, achieved through hard work in a society with few barriers. In the definition of the

American Dream by James Truslow Adams in 1931, "life should be better and richer and fuller

for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement"(33), regardless of

social class or circumstances of birth. 

The American Dream is rooted in the Declaration of Independence, which proclaims

that all men are created will equal right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But there

has been also the American dream that dream of a land in which life should be better

and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or
achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately,

and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of

motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each

woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be

recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or

position. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" (1963) rooted the

civil rights movement in the African-American quest for the American Dream. 

Many American authors added American ideals to their work as a theme or other

reoccurring idea, to get their point across. There are many ideals that appear in American

Literature such as, but not limited to, all people are equal, The United States of America is

the land of opportunity, independence is valued, The American Dream is attainable, and

everyone can succeed with hard work and determination. John Winthrop also wrote about this

term called, American Exceptionalism. This ideology refers to the idea that Americans are

the chosen ones, and that they are the light. 

In 2006 U.S. Senator Barack Obama wrote a memoir, The Audacity of Hope:

Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. It was this interpretation of the American

Dream for a young black man that helped establish his state wide and national reputations.

The exact meaning of the dream became for at least one commentator a partisan political

issue in the 2008 and 2012 elections. 

 Political conflicts, to some degree, have been ameliorated by the shared values

of all parties in the expectation that the American Dream will resolve many difficulties

and conflicts. 

The American Dream is the ideal that the government should protect each person's

opportunity to pursue their own idea of happiness. The Declaration of Independence protects

this American Dream. It uses the familiar quote: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that

all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable

Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. 

The Declaration continued that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted

among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. The Founding

Fathers put into law the revolutionary idea that each person's desire to pursue happiness

was not just self-indulgence. It was a part of what drives ambition and creativity. By

legally protecting these values, the founding fathers set up a society that was very

attractive for those aspiring to a better life. 

The Sociologist, Emily Rosenberg identified five components of the

American Dream that have shown up in countries around the world. They are

belief that other nations should replicate America's development, Faith in a

free market economy Support for free trade agreements and foreign direct

investment, Promotion of free flow of information and culture and acceptance of

government protection of private enterprise.

 John Ernst Steinbeck was born in 1902 in Salinas, California, of German and Irish

parentage. His father was of German origin and was also a bookkeeper, accountant, and

manager, and he eventually became the treasurer of Monterey County. The elder Steinbeck

was an avid gardener throughout his life, his son would always have to have a garden

wherever he lived and a somewhat introspective man. 

Steinbeck’s mother was of Irish descent, a woman of energy and determination,

emotional and sensitive to art, and fond of stories of fantasy and enchantment. The later

dichotomies observed in Steinbeck, between the romantic and the hard-headed naturalist,

between the dreamer and the masculine tough guy, may be partly accounted for by inheritance

from the Irish and German strains of his parents. 

The young Steinbeck had a local reputation as a loner and a bit of a dreamer. He

read much on his own, his favorite writings being those of Robert Louis Stevenson,

Alexandre Dumas, père, Sir Walter Scott, the Bible, and especially Le Morte d’ Arthur,

by Sir Thomas Malory. This last would remain an influence throughout his life, with

many of his stories displaying Arthurian parallels and influences; the work which

occupied much of his time in the last years of his life was a translation or redaction of

the Arthurian stories, unfinished at his death. 

Steinbeck grew to be a tall, gangly youth with broad shoulders, a barrel chest, and a

large head. He early developed a fondness for words and a passion for language that was never

to leave him. 
 He was independent-minded, not to say stubborn, and as a freshman in high school

determined to be a writer. He was graduated from high school in 1919, at best an average

student and athlete. For the next six years, he attended Stanford University on and off but

never took a degree. As in high school, he took what interested him and cared little for other

courses, even if required; the courses he took were those he thought would help him in his

writing. 

During his many vacations from Stanford, Steinbeck worked for the local sugar

company in the field and in the office; he also worked on ranches, on a dredging crew, and in

the beet harvest. 

He came to know well the Mexican-American workers alongside whom he labored.

He rather enjoyed working with his hands and was certainly throughout his life never afraid

of hard work; he also became a notable handyman and maker of gadgets. After leaving

Stanford for good in 1925, he worked sporadically during the next three years at a lodge in

the High Sierra near Lake Tahoe as a caretaker and handyman. 

The job gave him much, especially in the winter, for writing. Steinbeck briefly sought

his fortune in New York, where he worked on construction and as a cub reporter. He returned to

California in the summer of 1926. Since his early years in high school, Steinbeck had  been

writing. His first published stories were in Stanford literary magazine; his first paid story,

“The Gifts of Iban” was published pseudonymously in 1927. By 1930, his apprenticeship

could be said to be over: His first novel, Cup of Gold, was published, in the same year.  He

married Carol Henning, and he met Edward F. Ricketts, who was to have a notable effect upon
the ideas and content of his further works. “Cup of Gold” was not widely noticed, and

Steinbeck and his new wife, while not subjected to grinding poverty, did live a rather hand- to-

mouth existence. The publication of “Pastures of Heaven” (1932) and “To a God Unknown”

(1933) increased his critical reputation in narrow circles but did little for his finances or fame. 

Finally, the publication of “Tortilla Flat” (1935) made the breakthrough; the book

was a best-seller and brought Steinbeck fame and money. Though Steinbeck complained

about lack of money for the rest of his career, after this date he was never in any

financial distress. This book was the first full-length presentation of those themes and

characters that have come to be particularly associated with Steinbeck. 

He turned away from the mythic and legendary materials of” Cup of Gold”

and “To a God Unknown” and the novels dealt with contemporary issues,

especially the plight of the socially and economically dispossessed. Like the

great majority of Steinbeck’s works “Tortilla Flat” presents familiar, ordinary

characters based on his own first hand acquaintance. His next major works, “In

Dubious  Battle “(1936), “Of Mice and Men” (1937), and “The Grapes of Wrath”,

(1939), and “East of Eden” (1952) would continue to exploit these characters and

themes. In the same year, Steinbeck visited a camp for migrant workers. This visit

led to his most celebrate work, “The Grapes of Wrath” published in 1939. Sea of

Cortez followed in 1941. 

These works also displayed some of the effects of Steinbeck’s friendship with Ed

Ricketts (1897-1948), a marine biologist. Steinbeck had earlier been interested, if only
haphazardly, in natural science. His naturalistic view of men, especially in groups, was at

least reinforced by his friendship with Ricketts. Ricketts was an exponent of non-

teleological thinking seeing what is rather than what might be, should be, or could be. 

This attitude accorded well with Steinbeck’s own naturalistic impulses, at least as

fictional method; Steinbeck did not always accept the grim conclusions implicit in a

naturalistic view of man and maintained his belief in human progress and free will. The

most straightforward presentation of such views may be found in “The Log from the Sea

of Cortez” (1951), by both Steinbeck and Ricketts. During World War II, Steinbeck

produced only a few minor works until Cannery Row (1945). 

He served for a few months as a war correspondent in Europe, was divorced in 1942,

and married Gowyndolen Conger in 1943. He moved to New York and for the remainder of his

life travelled frequently with New York as a base. During these years he also spent much of

his time writing film scripts and stage plays based on his works. As much as any other

American novelist, Steinbeck was attracted to and involved in the stage and the cinema. 

After the war, he began the major work that critics and the public were expecting after

“The Grapes of Wrath”. The work was eventually to be “East of Eden” (1952), a long

generational novel into which Steinbeck poured much of his own personal experience and

which he regarded as his major work and expression of whatever he had learned over the

years. 
 The public did not share Steinbeck’s regard, and the novel is perhaps best known today

in its film version, starring the cult figure James Dean. Before “East of Eden” appeared,

however, Steinbeck had published “The Wayward Bus” (1947), which was a Book-of-the-

Month Club selection and “Burning Bright” (1950). After “East of Eden”, Steinbeck

published only three more novels: “Sweet Thursday” (1954), “The Short Reign of Pippin IV:

A  Fabrication” (1957), and “The Winter of Our Discontent” (1961). The latter is considered

to be the best of the three and expresses Steinbeck’s view of the malaise into which post-war

America had fallen. In the post-war years he travelled often, seeming unable to settle down in

a single place. He went several times to Russia. 

He is the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1962; John Ernst Steinbeck

secured his place in American literature largely on the basis of his inimitable novel “The

Grapes of Wrath”, which defined an epoch in American life by brilliantly combining the

documentary quality of journalism with the superior insight of highly imaginative fiction.

The California novels of John Steinbeck taken for the study can be grouped under the

same category not just on the basis of their California background alone. Various inherent and

recurring traits woven into intricate patterns constitute the essence of these novels. A similar

view is expressed by John S.Kennedy, in John Steinbeck: Life Affirmed and Dissolved: far more

important than the common scenes in Steinbeck is the common theme. Something of the sort is

discernible, of course, in the output of any writer, however many sided. In Steinbeck’s case the

common theme may be called “reverence for life”… Steinbeck’s preoccupation with life and

living is perhaps the main reason for his popularity and influence. (217-236).
 Steinbeck as natural realist in the depression era is found to be writer with a difference

when it comes to the task of depicting his region- the Salinas Valley in California-as his subject

and it has enabled him to closely follow the “Tortilla Flat” with “In Dubious Battle” and “Of

Mice and Men” with “The Grapes of wrath”. The view of a modern critic is given as follows:

His great possession as writer is not merely due to the possession of an interest in craft or

an experimental spirit; it is due to his possession of an unusual and disinterested simplicity, a

natural grace and tenderness and ease in his relation to his California world. Artistically, notably

in early works like “To a God Unknown” and “The pastures of Heaven”, these appeared as

artful primitivism reminiscent of Sherwood Anderson, and in its boyish California mysticism, of

Frank Norris., (Simkins John Steinbeck’s Populist Aesthetic).

But as observed by Alfred Kazin:

“Steinbeck’s gift was not so much a literary resource as a distinctively harmonious and

pacific view of life. In a period when so many better writer exhausted themselves, he had

welded himself into the life of the Salinas Valley and enjoyed a spiritual stability by

reporting the life cycle of the valley gardeners and mystics and adventures, by studying

and steeping himself in its growth processes out of a close and affectionate interest in the

biology of human affairs. Steinbeck’s absorption in the life of his native valley gave him

a sympathetic perspective on the animal nature of human life, a mean of reconciliation of

people as people. The depression naturalist saw life as one vast Chicago slaughterhouse,

a guerilla war, a perpetual bombing raid. Steinbeck had picked up a refreshing belief in

human fellowship and course; he had learned to accept the rhythm of life”. (Kazin 531).
 The California Novels of John Steinbeck are all based on the country and people of the

author, bringing about lifelike portrayal of men and women as well as events. “The Grapes of

Wrath”, “East of Eden,”, “To a God unknown,” “In Dubious Battle,” “Of Mice and Men,”

“The Red Pony, The long Valley, “The Pastures of Heaven,” “Tortilla Flat,” “Cannery Row

and Sweet”. Thursday is the significant work of fiction created in the California setting, right on

the Salinas Valley, the home front and hence a familiar background of the author. The last four

work in the list are mostly to do with the character draw after some real-life acquaintances of

Steinbeck and are therefore not only life-like but also emote and act in the likeness of the people

he knew. The subject of these books, thus founded on day-to-day strains of the area he knew,

namely, the frame country near his home in Salinas and the simple people who had settled there,

gave him the perfect launching pad to be inducted into the realm of reputation as the regional

writer of intellectual subject with considerable social significance. It is rightly pointed out, “The

mechanics of survival and the fortitude of man lie at the heart of almost everything Steinbeck has

ever written and in ties sense he is as germane to this generation as he was to that of the

Oklahoma Dust Bowl.” (Fontenrose 140).

“The Grapes of Wrath,” “East of Eden,” “are concerned with man’s effort to combat

the fury of Nature, which is manifested through a change in the type of sustenance offered to

man by the land on which he lives. The social upheavals and problems that arise out of this

development, all along run as an undercurrent.

“The Grapes of Wrath” is Steinbeck’s trek from the Dust Bowl of Oklahoma to the

fields of California and takes the form of a social fiction. The chief concern and quest of the

character in the novel is their own piece of land-a place they can call home-akin to the Promised

Land of the Scriptures. The novel opens with an elaborate narration of the social background,
which serves to amplify the pattern of action created to dispossess the Joad family and the

conflict in which they are caught up. Paul McCarthy opines that, “The Grapes of Wrath can be

read not only as fiction but as social document of the time: a record of drought conditions,

economic problems, and the sharecropping life.” (McCarthy 390). In fact this kind of

straightforward description render it scenic, be it the description of the drought in the opening

chapter or the torrential rains that inundate the land in the final chapter. The opening description

run through the first sixteen inter-chapters that come to about a hundred pages, in which the main

characters, be it the Joads or Wilsons, do not appear. Try offer a threadbare analysis of the

injustices meted out the land by the traditional farmers making it fallow or even bereft of

vegetation, in combination with the drought situation which also contributes a considerable share

of misery to them. Industrialization and the bank’s foreclosing of the mortgages, thereby taking

over the land of the poor farmers, following which event they are forcibly tractored out of their

homes, is depicted as an aftermath. Here begins the unending quest for the home in the west,

which is a white house surrounded by bounteous orchards in the land of plenty, California, which

is a striking contrast of description of the decaying and deserted house of the dust bowl-the

prototype of all such abandoned house.

CHAPTER -II

American Dream in John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath”

 “The Grapes of Wrath”, John Steinbeck’s masterpiece, is a starkly realistic rendition of

the Depression-era struggle of an Oklahoma farm family forced to move to California in order to

find employment. The family’s dilemma represents that of all rural, working-class households in

the Midwest and West during an age of increasing mechanization for upper-class, capitalistic

profit. In addition, Steinbeck’s female characters, especially, convey his message of working-

class unity.

The Joads are typical 1930’s tenant farmers, forced from home because “one man on a

tractor can take the place of twelve or fourteen families.” Reading advertisements of work

available in California, the Joads buy an old truck for the journey. The trip quickly kills lifelong

Oklahoman Grandpa Joad, and Grandma Joad dies in the Nevada desert. Throughout, the

impoverished Joads are victimizing repeatedly microcosmically representative of the entire

capital exploitation system underlying the Great Depression.

In “The Grapes of Wrath” (1939), Steinbeck shows how unemployment and social

inequality make the American Dream unattainable. The basic idea of the American Dream is

synonymous with the belief that all citizens should be free and have equal opportunity for

success. It's encapsulated in the phrase life, liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness'' - an American

citizen's 'unalienable' (non-negotiable) rights as stated so eloquently in the U. S. Constitution.

America's founding fathers believed fervently in the opportunity and equality of every

citizen. Rejecting the rigid English social system, Americans promoted religious freedom,

upward mobility, and equal access. But even in the early days of the Republic, the American
Dream rubbed up against contemporary practices of slavery (race discrimination) and women's

rights (women couldn't vote).

Tom Joad, recently paroled from the Oklahoma penitentiary after a conviction for the

manslaughter of an acquaintance who had pulled a knife on Tom during a minor disagreement,

cajoles a truck driver into giving him a ride closer to his family homestead despite a sign on the

truck forbidding hitchhikers. Tom establishes a bond with the driver based on a mutual dislike of

“boss’s orders. And an unwillingness to relinquish the last vestige if freedom from authority.

“Sometimes a guy’ll be a good guy even if some rich bastard makes him carry a sticker,

Tom says as he implores the truck driver for his assistance, and with those words. He establishes

an ongoing theme throughout the novel. Working people need a kinship against the abuses and

arbitrary dictates of employers.

Moreover, Tom’s success in convincing the driver to give him a lift demon strates Tom’s

the natural gift for manipulating people, even to the point of going against their self interest, as

part of a larger collective. Tom Joad, despite his leadership role after four years of imprisonment,

must eventually employ his talents a volatile temperament in the service of a larger whole.

Steinbeck then introduces the symbol of the Okies migration to California in an inter

chapter. A large box turtle struggles over an embankment onto a concrete road. Determined to

travel southwest. Nothing deters the turtle’s slow but steady journey, not even the maliciously

deliberate attempt by truck driver run over the creature. The turtle stop and withdraw into his

creature.
 The turtle stops and withdraws into his shell in protection for a short while, but then

continues on his steady way. Eventually, Tom Joad, after being dropped off several miles from

the Joad homestead, discovers the turtle on a dust road, and the tenacious reptile as a gift for his

younger brother, Ai placing it inside it his rolled up jacket, Tom could feel it struggling and

trying to break free. The turtle, against all odda, in time regains his freedom, and continues his

trek southwest, just as the Okies, carrying all of the worldly possession on the back of

dilapidated vehicles, make their way successfully to California.

“According to Casy, the “Holy Spirit” has nothing to do with Jesus or God. “Why God or

Jesus?” he asks Tom. “Maybe all men got one big soul,” and this universal soul derives

its power love. Made some uncomfortable by clear heresy, Tom suggests that Casy will

be persecuted if her pursues this doctrine?”(GW.19)

More important, the chance meeting and Casy’s unorthodox musing from the beginning

of Tom’s future role as a disciple to the former minister.

Tom invites Casy to join him and become reacquainted with the Joad family as the two

men cross a ridge overlooking the Joad farm, they realize the buildings have been partially

destroyed and abandoned. Like many tenant farmers during the depression, the Joad family had

been evicted by the owner of the property to implement a more efficient and profitable

agricultural method than sharecropping. Rather than a system of numerous small tenant farms,

owners chose to consolidate their holdings, and pay a daily wage to men on tractors who could
cover far more territory and at less cost than a man behind a horse drawn plow. Resisting their

eviction, the Joad ultimately had no choice but to leave when a neighbor and former friend,

Willy Feeley, riding one of the monster tractors, plowed through a corner of the house, and filled

in the well.

The story of the Joad’ dispossession comes from another neighbor, Muley Graves, who

has also been driven off his farm. Muley, half crazed by his homelessness, refuses to leave the

barren soil of Oklahoma despite the fact his wife and children have departed for California, lured

by the promise of high wages from landowners in need of seasonal workers. He calls himself a

“graveyard ghost,” haunting the abandoned farms, hiding in caves and fields, and periodically

taking potshots at the men on the infernal machines who now control the land.

Muley tells Tom that the Joad have moved in with his Uncle John while they pick cotton

and prepare for their own migration to California. Muley shares his meager catch of snared

rabbits with Casy and Tom, saying if a fella got some pinto eat another fella’s hungry why the

first fella am not got no choice. Again Steinbeck emphasizes the importance of self lessness and

cooperation even under the most desperate circumstances.

Presaging the upcoming journey of the Joad in an ancient Hudson touring car, Steinbeck

takes us into the mind and devious methods of a used car salesman. In a remarkable interchapter

where few of the sentences contain more than 10 words, and most are fragments, Steinbeck

replicates the fast talking spiel of a huckster, selling decrepit jalopies at ridiculously high prices

to dispossessed farmers who are frantic to reach the Promised Land of California. Already
exploited by the landowners, the gullible sharecroppers become easy victims to yet another

group of venal men, who profit from the misery of others.

In the Like many tenant farmers during the depression, the Joad family had been evicted

by the owner of the property to implement a more efficient and profitable agricultural method

than sharecropping. Rather than a system of numerous small tenant farms, owners chose to

consolidate their holdings, and pay a daily wage to men on tractors who could cover far more

territory and at less cost than a man behind a horse drawn plow.

Resisting their eviction, the Joads ultimately had no choice but to leave when a neighbor

and former friend, Willy Feeley, riding one of the monster tractors, plowed through a corner of

the house, and filled in the well. The story of the Joad’ dispossession comes from another

neighbor, Muley Graves, who has also been driven off his farm. Muley, half crazed by his

homelessness, refuses to leave the barren soil of Oklahoma despite the fact his wife and children

have departed for California, lured by the promise of high wages from landowners in need of

seasonal workers. He calls himself a “graveyard ghos,” haunting the abandoned farms, hiding in

cavers and fields, and periodically taking potshots at the men on the infernal machines who now

control the land.

Muley tells Tom that the Joads have moved in with his Uncle John while they pick cotton

and prepare for their own migration to California. Muley shares his meager catch of

snared rabbits with Casy and Tom, saying “if a fella got some pin to eat and another

fella’s hungry why the first fella am not got no choice” (GW.28).
Again Steinbeck emphasizes the importance of selflessness and cooperation even under the most

desperate circumstances.

Presaging the upcoming journey of the Joads in an ancient Hudson touring car, Steinbeck

takes us into the mind and devious methods of a used car salesman. In a remarkable interchapter

where few of the sentences contain more than 10 words, and most are fragments, Steinbeck

replicates the fast talking spiel of a huckster, selling decrepit jalopies at ridiculously high price to

dispossessed farmers who are frantic to reach the promised land of California. Already exploited

by the landowners, the gullible sharecroppers become easy victims to yet another group of venal

men, who profit from the misery of others.

In the company of Casy, Tom finally reunites with his family at his uncle’s farm. Before

meeting any of his family members, Tom spots a truck parked in the middle of the yard,

surrounded by furniture and other household items. He realizes his family is in the midst of final

preparations for the departure to California.

Tom’s father, Old Tom, at first expresses fear that his hot headed son has busted out of

prison but then conveys his joy that Tom will be able to accompany the family to California.

Playing a small joke on his wife, Pa Joad announces there will be two extra mouths for the

breakfast Ma Joad is cooking for the three generations of the Joads. Without knowing who has

shown up, Ma agrees to share the side meat and bread, and turning to greet the visitors, slowly

recognizes her son.

 So powerful is the bond between the two that Tom bites through his lip in his happiness

at being with his mother, and she soundlessly caresses him as if to reassure herself that he is real.

Steinbeck describes Ma as the “citadel of strength” for the family.

“While Pa goes to the barn to announce Tom’s arrival to Grandma and Grandpa,

Ma inquires about Tom’s state of mind after years of incarceration. You am not

poisoned mad? You don’t hate anybody?” (GW.62)

She asks, and Tom reassures her that he is fine though furious at the destruction of the

family farm. Ma tells him not to go off on his own against those who evicted the Joads, and says,

“They say there’s a hundred thousand of us shoved out,” and “If we all got mad the same way –

they wouldn’t hunt anybody down.” In this odd statement from such an outwardly gentle woman,

Steinbeck reiterates the theme of unity in the face of adversity.

Grandma repeats like a litany and the two cantankerous and seemingly indestructible old

folks rush for the farm house, followed slowly by Tom’s older brother, Noah. Grandpa is

portrayed as a lecherous and appetitive child, fond of dirty jokes, and matched only in meanness

by his wife, who finds comfort in a shrill ferocious religiosity. (94)

Noah, unlike any of the rest of the family, has no passion for life, and probably suffered

brain damage at birth when his father frantically pulled him from his mother’s agonized body.

Granma insists on a prayer from Casy before the meal, and although Casy insists he is no longer

a preacher, he offers a curious and introspective series of thoughts about finding his way to a

new vision of holiness after wandering in the wilderness like Jesus, where all working together

and “kind of harnessed to the whole shebang” would find holiness and love.
 After breakfast Tom inspects the truck purchased for the journey westward, and learns

that his younger brother Al had a crucial role in selecting the vehicle, because he had acquired

knowledge about engines while driving a truck. Al is a hellion and a skirt chaser who can think

of “nothing but girls and engines (145). Tom also learns that his sister, Rose of Sharon (or

Rosasharn) has married a young man named Connie Rivers, and the two will be accompanying

them to California.

Later that day Tom finds his sister to be completely self absorbed in her impending

motherhood, and her husband to be somewhat immature. Lastly Uncle John appears with the two

youngest Joads, Ruthie and Winfield, in tow, after a last trip to town to sell the family’s meager

belongings. Uncle John, as has previously been explained, bears an extraordinary burden of guilt

for the death of his young and pregnant wife many years ago when he refused to call the doctor

after his bride developed appendicitis. Since then he has attempted to assuage his culpability by

alternating between remarkable acts of kindness and generosity, and drunken licentiousness. The

children offer an ongoing comic relief in the novel, and because of their youth, prove the most

adaptable to the changes in their lives.

The family must face the heart wrenching task of sorting through their remaining

possessions, and determining what must be left behind or burned. Ma expresses her doubts about

the rosy conditions in California described so glowingly in the handbills advertising work for

cotton and fruit pickers. Tom admits he has heard stories of far different circum stances, of filthy

camps and subsistence wages, but also reminds his mother they have no choice.

They must face each day as it comes. Jim Casy asks permission to ride along with the

family, and after a raucous family council assembled next to the truck, the Joads accept Casy’s
request. The truck has become the center of the family’s life Tom reveals he will be violating his

parole once he crosses the border out of Oklahoma, but will not be deterred from helping his

family in the time of crisis. The entire group pitches in to slaughter and salt down the two pigs

for food on the road, and stays up most of the night loading the truck.

At dawn with 13 people aboard plus the family dog, and what’s left of the family’s

property crammed into every nook and cranny, the truck creeps slowly on to the road, like the

turtle heading southwest. At the last minute Grandpa refuses to make the trip, and Ma forcibly

drugs him with strong patent medicine, and loads his unconscious body into the back of the

vehicle. Despite his prior excitement at the vision of rolling in a tub of California grapes, the

irascible old man’s ties to the land are too strong, and the prospect of leaving his lifelong home

unbearable.

Immediately the family’s status shifts from the hardscrabble life of tenant farming, in

which the land holds the central concern, to the transitory nature of a road family, and

preoccupation with their mechanized home. Al’s stature rises since he is the expert with the inner

workings of a car, and he alternates behind the wheel with Tom, who learned to drive in prison.

By the end of the first day the family has driven 200 miles, one- 10th of the distance to

California, but has also experienced its first tragedies. During a stop for water at a rundown gas

station, the dog bolts into the road, and is crushed by a passing motorist. Watching the accident,

Rose of Sharon has the first inkling that her pregnancy may not be going well as she experiences

a painful twinge at the brutal sight.

At sundown the Joads pull off the road next to another migrant couple, Sairy and Ivy

Wilson, who have pitched a small tent next to their broken down Dodge touring car. Almost
immediately it becomes clear that Grandpa is deathly ill. The Wilsons offer the shelter of their

tent to the old man, and after Casy recites the Lord’s Prayer at Granma’s insistence, Grandpa

dies of a stroke. Unable to afford the $40 for a pauper’s funeral, the men bury the old man in a

secluded, unmarked grave, wrapped in Sairy’s quilt. In his lifetime Grandpa had never left

Oklahoma and dies before the Joads even reach the state border. Symbolically the older

generation has passed its authority to the younger generation.

The Wilsons and Joads make the decision to travel together, relying on the safety and

security of numbers. The Wilsons gain the mechanical expertise of Al and Tom to fix their

decrepit automobile, and the Joads Lighten the burden of the overloaded truck by shifting some

of its passengers to the Wilsons car.

A new familial relationship begins to grow, based on joint need, and reciprocal

responsibility. After the connection among strangers is formed, Steinbeck addresses the primary

theme of “The grapes of wrath”.

“He calls it Man self, the transformation of single individuals, who “hunger for

joy and some security” into a vast aggregate of human beings with the same

desires and goals. No longer do they identify themselves as “I”. But rather as we,

united by common suffering and mutual sharing”. (GW.163).

This multiplication of single souls into a universal soul is creative, not destructive, and

undergirds all of mankind’s progress. Toward the end of this interchapter, Steinbeck mentions

four revolutionaries – Paine, Marx, Jefferson, and Lenin – and suggests that individual owners

may not survive the coming storm of collective outrage.

 “Now unified, the two families continue the trek westward, at “first in flight” until

gradually “the highway become their home and movement their means of

expression”. (GW.228)

The moment of the road has become their way of life. Only Granma fails to adapt to the

rhythm of travel, and has lapsed into delirium. Crossing in to New Mexico, with Al driving the

Wilson car, a suspicious rattle becomes a grinding noise as a con rod bearing goes out.

The two cars pull over to the said of the road, and the two brothers confer over the

difficult repair job facing them. Tom suggests that everyone but he and Casy continue on to the

closest town, Santa Rosa, and try to locate spare parts.

“In Tom’s mind, “The nearer our folk get to California, the quicker they going to

be money rolling”. Pa agrees to his son’s reasoning, but ma fiercely agitated,

challenges her husband’s authority for the first time in her life. Taking up a tire

iron, she refuses to go ahead, and threatens to knock him “belly up” “All we got is

the family unbroken”. (GW.256)

She says, and demonstrates an unshakable determination to keep her kinfolk together. To

everyone’s surprise, pa yields to his wife’s demand, and a shift in family dynamic takes place.

Ma has now assumed the leadership of the Joads. The old rules and way of life no longer apply.

After some difficulty, Tom acquires the parts to fix the Dodge at a junkyard, where Tom

objects rudely to the one-eyed yard keeper’s self-pitying defeatism. No longer content to live day

at a time, and to keep his nose out of others’ business, Tom has begun to take Casy’s words to

heart, and to reach out toward the unfortunate, even if tactlessly.

 After Tom repairs the Dodge with quiet skill and confidence, he, Al and Casy join the

others at a campground where the owner charges 50 cents a night for each carload of people.

There they encounter a scrawny, ragged man heading eastward away from California who tells

the tale of losing his wife and children to starvation, and of the impoverishment of migrant

workers. The ragged man claims the handbills promising work to everyone re part of a devious

plot to keep wages low, and the workers from organizing. Ma refuses to believe the story and

holds onto the hope for a better future for her family in the green land of California.

Traveling through Arizona, the minicaravan experiences the first discrimination toward

“Okies.” Encountering a border guard who warns them to keep moving, they drive all through

the night to spend as little time as possible in the state. At the Colorado River, having crossed

over into California, the men decide to take a refreshing bath in the cool water, almost as a

baptismal ritual.

There the men encounter another man who has left California to return to his ancestral

home, where “at leas’ we can starve to death with folks we know” and not with a “bunch of fell

as that hates us.” Asked for his opinion, Uncle John points out that the stories of misery and

deprivation no longer matter.

The Joads will continue on because they no longer have a choice. Crawling into a spot of

shade to get some sleep before the nighttime desert crossing, Tom is joined by his brother, Noah.

Noah announces he intends to stay by the river, saying “the folks don’t really care for me.” Noah

somehow senses the additional burden his disability will place on the family and walks away,

much to his brother’s consternation. Tom, however, makes no effort to retrieve his older sibling

accepting the decision as his brother’s right.

 Back at the camp, Ma and Rosesharn are confronted by an abusive policeman as they

tend to Granma. Ordered to vacate the premises immediately, Ma threatens the policeman with

an iron skillet, and castigates him for scaring helpless women. He backs away, but not before

flinging insults at her. In a panic, Ma sends Ruthie in search of Tom, certain that her ex convict

son will be apprehended by the border patrolman. The family gathers around the campfire where

Ma learns that Noah has left.

Despite her best efforts, the family is breaking up, and the Wilsons also announce their

inability to go on. Sairy’s weakness from cancer has overtaken her, and she is too debilitated to

travel any further. Leaving most of their cash and the rest of their food for the Wilsons, the Joad

decide to cross the desert at night when the oppressive heat will be more bearable. Under the

tarpaulin covering the back of the Hudson, Connie and Rose make love quietly while John and

Casy discuss the nature of sin, and Ma comforts Granma. In the middle of the desert, the truck is

stopped for an agricultural inspection.

Ma prevents the officers from examining the vehicle thoroughly, telling them there’s “a

sick old lady” who needs immediate medical attention accepting her plea the officers wave the

Joads through, and by sunrise they have crossed the desert into the mountains and from there into

the central green valley. Everyone except Ma clambers out of the truck to view the wondrous

sight, and when Ma finally joins them, they learn that Granma died during the night before the

family was stopped at the inspection station.

“Fearful that her loved ones would be detained permanently, Ma lied to the

inspectors, and then spent the rest of the night curled up next to the old woman’s
 corpse. In awe, Casy says of Ma, “there’s a woman so great with love-she scares

me.” (GW.282).

After taking the body to a county coroner’s office for a pauper’s burial, the Joads press

on to their first HOOVERVILLE, a squatters’ camp of itinerant workers common in the

depression. As the me inquire about the possibility of work, the truth of the desperate situation

for migrant workers emerges. Men speak of their experiences of constantly being on the road

looking for a job, while being hounded by the authorities if they stay too long in one spot.

The workers, lured by enticing handbills scattered across the country, show up in droves,

and the owners of the farming conglomerates pay the migrants a pittance for difficult long hours.

Those who organize or protest have their names put on a blacklist circulated across the state, and

the local constabulary arrests the “agitators” on trumped up charges of vagrancy or stealing.

As Tom hears the reality of California, he grows more and more angry. Later, starving

and dirty children watch Ma prepare a celebratory stew for her family. In shame, Ma and Uncle

John leave their portion for the camp youngsters. After helping a young man named Floyd

Knowles fix his car’s engine, Al hears of the possibility of work about 200 miles north. Excited,

he tells Tom about his plans to head north by himself, but Tom expresses his concern about Ma’s

reaction if the family continues to break up. Shortly afterward, a labor contractor pulls up in a

fancy car accompanied by deputies.

The contractor offers the men in the camp work picking fruit in Tulare Country, but when

Floyd ask to see a contract guaranteeing an hourly wage, he’s accused of being an agitator, and

arrested on suspicion of breaking into a car dealership. Floyd fights back, and as e escapes down
the line of tents, Tom casually sticks out his foot, and trips the pursuing deputy. Observing the

melee from the crowd, Casy steps forward and kicks the downed deputy into unconsciousness.

Alerted by Floyd of the intention of a group of vigilantes to burn out the camp overnight,

Tom returns to the Joad family campsite and urges everyone to leave. They pack up the truck,

and realize that Connie Rivers has abandoned his wife and unborn child in disappointment at the

squalid conditions a roadblock of armed men, and Tom is forced to play a servile whiner to

protect his family from the imminent violence.

“Following the example of Casy’s sacrifice, he quells his temper for the greater

good. Ma congratulates her son for his patience, and predicts a “different time’s

coming when “us people will go on living when all the people is gone” (GW.307).

Wanting to be treated like human beings again and to achieve some normalcy, the Joads

seek out the government camp nicknamed “Weed patch.” Funded by the federal government,

similar camps across California allowed the Okies to regain self respect, have access to a more

nutritious diet and to rudimentary health care. Self governing and autonomous, the camps were

off limits to the local authorities, who were intent on bullying the migrants into submission. The

camps were not charitable institutions. Those who were allowed a space were expected to work

for the rent by cleaning up, or doing other chores to maintain the amp’s order. Each family

permitted to stay could draw on a $20 allotment at the camp store if they could not find work.

For the Joads Weed patch was welcome respite from the ordeals of their travel.

Tom finds work almost immediately with the help of the Wallance family, who not only

share their breakfast, but also risk having their wages lowered by including an extra man on the

work crew laying pipe for a small landowner named Mr. Thomas. Walking to the Thomas farm,
Tom learns that the Wallaces have been in California for 10 months, experiencing mostly

famine, and only recently had sold their car in desperation for $10 when it was worth &75.

Arriving at the farm. Mr. Thomas informs the group that the Farmer’s Association has

put pressure on him to lower his hourly wages down for the large landowners. Ashamed by his

unwillingness to fight unfairness, Mr. Thomas warns the men that outside troublemakers have

been ordered to stage a fight at the weekly Saturday dance in Weed patch, so that deputies can be

brought in to quell the disturbance. Nothing frightens the agriculture conglomerates more than

the possibility that the migrant workers will organize, and Weed patch, by definition, is

organized.

For the first time in their lives, the Joads experience modern flush toilets, and hot and

cold running water from taps. Ma Joad has a pleasant meeting with Jim Rawley, the camp

manager, who inquires kindly about the family’s well being. She and Rosharon meet the Lady’s

Committee, which sets schedules for the daily cleaning of the bath facilities. The only dark cling

is a visit to Rose of Sharon from a fundamentalist Christian, Mrs. Sandry, who warns the young

women that her baby is marked by sin. Eventually Ma confronts Mrs. Sandry, and threatens

physical violence if she approaches Rose aging. Ma turns her back completely on the rigid

construction of old time religion.

Warned by Tom and the Wallace’s of the impending raid, the camp security committee

makes plans against the there at from outside during the Saturday night dance. Immediately the

head of the Central committee stresses the importance of doing no harm to the anticipated

invaders. “Don’t you hurt them fellas? Don’t you use no stick nor no knife or arm, or anything

like that?” The peaceable kingdom of Weed patch can only survive if it remains peaceable.
Posting extra patrols around the perimeter, and instructing everyone in the camp to maintain a

heightened scrutiny of any strangers, the Camp committee allows the Saturday night dance to go

forward. In eager anticipation of an entertaining evening, the Joads dress in their finest clothing.

Even Rose of Sharon, pining desperately for her derelict husband and ashamed at her

abandonment, agrees to accompany Ma to the dance. As expected, the interlopers invade the

carefree evening, but are spotted and intercepted by the vigilant security details before any harm

or disturbance takes place. As if on cue, sheriff’s deputies arrive in town cars just as the three

invaders are quietly escorted from the camp, claiming they have received word of a riot.

Disappointed by the quiet atmosphere, the deputies pull away and wait again on the outskirts of

weed patch for any pretext to destroy the camp.

They amplify the message of the novel. Throughout the state of California, the modern

science of agriculture leads to abundant crops. As the fruit ripens the market price of fruit

decreases. Across the country as the depression deepens, the demand for fruits and vegetables

dries up, and the fruit dries up as well, on the branch and the vine.

There is no profit to be made from the crop, and therefore, no reason to hire pickers. Let

the crops rotor be dumber into rivers or burned with kerosene, the owners say, rather than incur a

monetary loss, as children starve from malnutrition. Steinbeck ends the chapter with the

followings: “In the souls of the people, “the Grapes of wrath” are filling and growing heavy,

growing heavy for the vintage.

After a month at Weed patch, Ma insists the Joads move on. Only Tom has found work in

the area, and that for just five days. She worries that the pleasant atmosphere in the camp has

encouraged complacency and stagnation, and the family supplies are perilously low. The next
morning, bowing to Ma’s authority, the Joad once more drive away in the Hudson. On the way

north, a nail punctures one of the tires, and as Tom and A repair it, a man drives by and offers a

job picking peaches at the Hooper Ranch, only 35 miles away.

Eagerly, the family follows the directions given, but as they approach, they witness a

large police presence blocking the entrance to the Hooper place. Unbeknownst to the Joad, they

have been hired as strikebreakers. Paid five cents a box, the entire Joad family, including Ruthie

and Winfield, manages only 20 boxes in the first day. Ma takes her dollar credit to the company

store, and discovers how little it will buy with markups of 20 to 25 percent. She shames the store

manager into giving her 10 cents’ worth of sugar, and then returns to the dilapidated shack

provided by the Hooper Corporation to prepare supper.

After a skimpy meal, Tom wanders to the front gate to investigate the demonstration he

had witnessed earlier that day. Carefully avoiding the armed guards, Tom crawls over the fence,

and to his delight encounters Casy in a tent with the strikers. During his imprisonment for the

assault on the deputy, Casy translated his philosophy of love and unity into a powerful message,

and has become a strike leader.

“While Tom and Casy shares their recent experiences, a sentry alerts them to the

approach of the Hooper guards and they attempt to escape. Caught, Casy turns to

his persecutors and cries plaintively, “you fellas don’t know what you’re doing,

you helping to starve kids” (GW.321).

A heavyset man crushes Casy’s skull with a pick handle. Overcome with rage and

revenge, Tom wrenches the pick handle away, and beats Casy’s killer to death, but in the process

receives a maiming blow to his face.

 Market now as the attacker? Tom creeps carefully back to his family’s cabin and waits

for the dawn. He relates the story of the dual murders of the previous evening when the family

awakes, and predicts accurately the price for a box of peaches will plummet by 50 percent now

that the strike is broken.

He appeals to Ma to allow him to sneak away, but she is determined to protect her son,

Over the course of the day, as Tom hides, Rose of Sharon attacks him for bringing possible harm

to her baby; Winfield Collapses in the early stages of malnutrition; a host of pickers willing to

work for two and a half cents a box storm the Hooper Ranch; and Ma makes plans for the family

to make its escape intact. Pa no longer even makes a pretense of having control of his family.

Having made a cave like nest for Tom in the back of the truck, the Joads leave the

Hooper Ranch, and take the back roads north, hoping to avoid the police. After 20 miles, the

family sports sign advertising work for cotton pickers next to a group of abandoned railcars.

Tom convinces his mother to allow him to hide in a concealed culvert nearby while his

face heals, and the family lives in one of the boxcars and picks cotton. Coming from Oklahoman,

the Joad family understands about picking cotton. They enter a period of relative prosperity, and

having staked their claim early on half a boxcar, they even have room to spread out and have a

modicum of privacy. Unfortunately, Ruthie divulges the family’s secret about her older brother

and his hiding place during a childish quarrel.

Ma makes her way to Tom’s sanctuary and bids farewell to him forever. In their last

conversation, Ma repeats her blind caresses at the beginning of the book when he returned home

from prison. In the darkness of the cave, she memorizes his face with her fingers, and listens to

his voice as he announces his intention to follow Casy’s example.

 “Tom begins quietly by saying, “I now know a fellow am not any good alone.”

And then he builds to one of the most famous passage in American literature. He

declares he will be “ever” “where” there is injustice, “wherever there’s a fight so

hungry people can eat,” and “wherever there’s a cop beating up a guy.”(GW.342).

Like Paul to Jesus Christ, Tom has become Casy’s most fervent apostle and will stand as

an evangelical champion to the boxcar; Ma discovers her family will become further diminished.

Al has decided to marry Aggie Wainwright, the daughter of the people who share the abandoned

railcar, and take a job as a mechanic in a nearby town.

As winter approaches, the migrants know they must accept every job, and Ma agree to

pick a small field of late planted cotton. Rose of Sharon insists on going along, although the birth

of her child is imminent. Returning from the fields, the migrants huddle in the railcars as early

winter rains intensify.

Beginning with a drought of biblical proportions, the novel ands with a flood resembling

Noah’s deluge. Rosesharn gives birth to a stillborn baby, while the men of the camp valiantly but

futilely attempt to stem the rising water from the nearby river. Uncle John, tasked to bury the

baby boy, instead puts him in a box and floats him downriver to remind the town folk of the

migrant misery.

As the water threatens to inundate the boxcars, Ma leads hat remains of her family to an

abandoned barn on a hill overlooking the flood. There they encounter a starving man with a

young son who has taken shelter from the storm. Wordlessly, Ma Communicates with Rose of

Sharon, and Rose offers her breast to the starving man. Like Tom following Casy’s lead, Rose

has accepted her mother’s mentorship, and expanded her heart to include the “family of man.”
The American dream may be a myth or destiny. But for American author John Steinbeck, it was

a failed promise. In “The Grapes of Wrath” (1939), Steinbeck show how unemployment and

social inequality make the American dream unattainable.

The basic idea of the American dream is synonymous with belief that all citizens should be

free and have equal opportunity for success. It’s encapsulated in the “life, liberty, and the pursuit

of Happiness an American citizen’s unalienable (non-negotiable) right as stated so eloquently in

the U.S. constitution.

America’s founding fathers believed frequently in the opportunity and equality of every

citizen. Rejecting the rigid English social system, American promoted religious freedom, upward

mobility, and equal access. But even in the early days of the Republic, the American dream

rubbed up against contemporary practices of race discrimination and right of vote to women.

Today, American citizen’s benefit from constitutional amendment that confirms equal

citizenship based on race and gender. But even with judicial, economic, social changes that have

taken place in the past hundred years, may believe that the American dream is just a fantasy.

Several important work of literature from the early 20 th century mark the emergence of a

remarkably pessimistic “The Grapes of Wrath”, along with F.Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great

Gatsby” (1925) and Arthur miller’s “A death of a salesman” (1949) suggest that, for many

Americans, the good life is no longer achievable. Steinbeck questions whether California really

is a ‘promised land’ in “The Grapes of wrath”.

First of all, this resonates with the destination of sacred scripture like Jerusalem and

Mecca. It also related to the American drive toward westward expansion. The notion of manifest

destiny associated with men the belief that God granted white men the authority to settle the
continent, designates the territories of California and the Pacific Northwest as Promised Land.

When all is said and done, the Joads head west in hope of finding wealth and prosperity in

California.

After all, why would the fliers lie about the work needed there? Ma says to Tom, your

father got a hand bill on yella paper, telling how they need folk to work. They wouldn’t go to

that trouble if they weren’t plenty worked. Costs ‘end good money to get them handbills out.

What’d they want at lie for, an’ costing ‘end money to lie?’’

In the process of packing and loading up the jalopy, Ma Joads imagines what their life

will be like in California : “I like to think know nice it’s going to be, may be, in California.

Never cold. A fruit ever’ place, and people just being in the nicest places, little white house in

among the orange trees. I wonder-that is, if we all get jobs an all work-maybe we can get one of

them little white house. The little fellas go out and pick oranges right off the tree. They am not

going to be able to stand it, they’ll get to yelling so.”

Ma Joads describes the American dream as the opportunity to achieve a good, full, rich

life. Her unflappable faith kindles the whole family’s hope that thing will soon get better.

However, this belief that Americans have the right, even destiny, to occupy land across the

continent established a trend toward individualism, a social theory upholding the right of any

‘one’ man to stake a claim on property. But individualism has its limits.

As Steinbeck notes in “The Grapes of Wrath”, individualism work to the detriment of

the common man. The struggle of the migrant labourer illustrates how the American Dream has

gone awry. Under the control of individualist economic terms that philosophy strips right from

the common good placing power instead in the hands of a wealthy few.
 Chapter-III

CONCLUSION

There are innumerable little people in this world who are socially, economically and

illiberally marginalized, subordinated and subjugated in a myriad ways. A dispossessed, an exile

a migrant worker, a fruit picker, a farmer and an underdog stumoles as the road of life is

uncertain and its prospects are bleak. A squalid reality is that there is no one to kindle a light in

their world, no one to retrieve and no one who can set up blazing torches in the dark. Hence

sometime these people feel that the power of their body is diminished and their life is surrounded

by ignorance, hatred, greed, malignant villainy injustice and conceit. The veracities of life are

really horrid for them and they lose the power to stir up strife. Instead of becoming a stormy

petrel, they become insipid and are forced to accept the things as they are. They are evoked about

their plight and their problem defies any solution. Their life becomes an ineluctable struggle.
Though emotionally broken, they still cling tenaciously to life. The novels of Steinbeck are a rich

brew of depth of emotion, comedy and adventure.

John Steinbeck has written all his novels in protest against such social injustice. His

novels Manifest novels manifest depth of emotion and are beautifully wrought with a depth of

insight and so has given him worldwide recognition. His fierce denunciation of the maltreatment

has made his novels worthy of reading. The novels of John Steinbeck make him a writer who has

a feeling for these little people. His novels which are located in communities of the fringe,

outside the dominant upper class milieu become the centre of his novels. The bulk of his creative

work realistically depict agonies endured by the urban fringe groups, the little class people and

their ineluctable struggle. He never penned his autobiography. Nevertheless he revealed himself

in 16 novels, a short story collection, many personal letters, two screenplays, and several

nonfiction works.

Some may not think of Steinbeck as a "Western writer," but in his best novels and short

stories. He gave definition and voice to his unique experience of living, working and traveling in

the American West.

Born in the Salinas Valley of California, Steinbeck used his boyhood home in Salinas and

the more upper class Monterey Peninsula area as settings for “Of Mice and Men”, “East of

Eden”, “Cannery Row”, and others. This California landscape informed his best works and

influenced his unique characters and themes. "Its place that writes your books," observed

Frederick Manfred, another Western writer. And this was certainly true of Steinbeck.
 His early dedication to writing of social protest may have come from his family's belief

system. His county-treasurer father and schoolteacher mother narrated the lore of rural California

to him. But if his mother's anecdotes and love of literature didn't inspire him enough. His own

privileged circumstances may have. Steinbeck lived a life of middle-class comfort amidst the

hard and often tragic lives of farmers, migrants, and ranchers in his native Salinas Valley.

Steinbeck was an eyewitness to poverty. He had real-life subjects for his attention and

compassion. Steinbeck’s heart went out to these humble people but he didn’t pity them.

He actually knew hard work. Boyhood jobs — fruit picker, ranch hand, bricklayer, and

delivery boy — gave him a genuine appreciation for labor. As an adult, he traveled extensively

through the West from Oklahoma to California, experiencing first-hand the sad and frightening

conditions of migrant workers. He lived in their camps, listened to their authentic stories and

collected material for his writing. Steinbeck's social conscience — an awareness of the desperate

plight of others — did not emerge in isolation. The author lived through the Great Depression of

the 1930s. The economic collapse grew severest in the center of the country after a prolonged

drought turned Oklahoma into a Dust Bowl. Images of starving farmers and migrant workers

desperately searching for work were emblazoned in to the hearts of Americans. The poverty and

desperation inspired an era of soul-searching that Steinbeck was happy to encourage. Against the

setting of California, that symbol of infinite promise and dreams, Steinbeck contrasted the

botched efforts of men and women to live in peace and dignity.

 During the 30s, Steinbeck wrote what most consider his enduring work “The Grapes of

Wrath” (1937).These novels are more than works of imagination. They are heartfelt revelations

of the loneliness and desperation that many Americans felt. Steinbeck insisted that this pervasive

hopelessness was a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. He meant for his fiction to sound

the alarm and provoke action. His passionate defense was for the common man as authentic

social conscience. "Like everyone," he said of his desire to write, "I want to be good and strong

and virtuous and wide and loved”. Still, he never wavered in his belief that literature should try

to depict lives as they are really lived, regardless of politics or personal gain.

Steinbeck was motivated to arouse sympathy for the little people. He saw that they were

often suffering cruelly in their environment and that the causes for their misery were frequently

beyond their control. Steinbeck saw and wrote the lives of innocent victims. His writing implies

that these unfortunates could just as easily have been well off in the materialistic American

society had external circumstances been just a little different. Steinbeck expected readers to hate

this suggestion because it would rob them of their own security. He was gratified when many

agreed. When he accepted a Nobel Prize in 1962, Steinbeck declared optimistically that literature

was "our greatest hazard and our only hope." He believed that the power of writing and

communication was in uniting people and helping them to overcome their most enduring

troubles. Steinbeck sought "to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit."

Through the courage, glory, and dignity of all his suffering characters, Steinbeck delivered a

message to America. Steinbeck words sums up his philosophy, "we got a job to do."
 When “Tortilla flat” appeared in 1935 Steinbeck had already completed his next novel

“In Dubious Battle”, published in 1936. It was not dealt not with mystical romance or exotic

people in faraway places but with pressing contemporary problems in American life. Together

with “Of Mice and & Men” (1937) and “The Grapes of Wrath” (1939), “In Dubious Battle”

indicates Steinbeck’s bitter awareness of the social conflicts and individual tragedies and

disappointments born of the turmoil and deprivation of the depression years. Devoid of the

frivolity and light hearted warmth of “Tortilla Flat”, “In Dubious Battle” raw, harsh work, that

Steinbeck himself called it, ‘a brutal book’. It is a novel which explored the biased motivations,

ruthless methods and savage battles of strikes and labor disputes. Steinbeck predicted, the

communists will hate it. As a novelist, he was less interested in political theory or ideological

dogma as he was in human behavior. “In Dubious Battle” attempted to articulate the beliefs,

feelings, desires and fears of striking men and their radical leaders. Critics have known the novel

more dispassionately. Steinbeck wrote neither to inspire, nor to provoke nor to condemn but to

understand and portray honestly an aspect of life he found fascinating and perhaps bewildering.

Another called it, a masterpiece of realistic and naturalistic fiction: realistic in its completely

objective narrative and accurately reported dialogue, and naturalistic in its content.

Steinbeck is a realist and has deep understanding of human nature. As such he is a great

psychologist too. He is aware that the migrant laborer suffers not only on account of poverty but

also because they have lost their dignity. He understands their agony and deep pain and therefore

he sympathizes with them and channelizes his feelings of sympathy in the right direction by

converting it into an effective plan of action, to draw attention of America to this in human

picture of man by his fellow being. Steinbeck emerges once again as a psychologist when he
projects the lonely American of the 20th century in his novels. One of the most recurring themes

in his novels is that of loneliness. Like Pat, “In Dubious Battle”. He tells Jim, when I wasn’t

working it made me unhappy and lonely. Pat takes up work with the conscious aim of

overcoming loneliness. Dr. Burton on the other hand is an intellectual dedicated to his medical

profession, in sympathy with the workers taking good medical care of them. But though busy

and engrossed in his profession he feels lonely because like pat, he does not belong to any group.

He is dedicated not to a cause but to receptivity.

Steinbeck’s books expressed the sprite of his tie, in particular, the Depression Decade of

the 30s. It was a period of small disasters and large melodramas that lasted from the Stock

market Crash of 29 until the outbreak of the European War, ten years later. It was John’s most

creative and fortunate period. From the beginning of the Depression until his death in 1968, over

a period of forty years, he published almost thirty books. His books were generally greeted with

disdain by professional and academic critics, although he reached an enthusiastic reading

audience around the world. His novels were translated into many languages, and his popularity

was unequalled in the Scandinavian countries, in Japan, and in Russia. In the latter country, in

the 1960s, his bellicose attitudes about Vietnam alienate the Kremlin, but the Russian people still

loved his work.

The very act of writing about the great Depression was able to extricate himself from its

grasp. Three of his outstanding novels of the Depression, “In Dubious Battle”, “Of Mice and

Men”, and “The Grapes of Wrath”, were deluging him with so much money that he was losing

touch with the dispossessed people of the day, those very same ones who’d been the source of
his inspiration and success. The mountains always carry large significance for Steinbeck, in the

trance into the Promised Land for the Okies. In “East of Eden”, Steinbeck provides two

mountain ranges, one dark and one light, which symbolically frame the struggle between good

and evil in the Valley between the ranges.

For Grandpa, grapes represent the possible dream of the Promised Land, imaged land is

fallen land, riddled by greed, and as the prophecy and a the prophecy of the sweet grapes is

replaced by the reality of thin stew, “The Grapes of Wrath” take root in their place. The turtle

functions as symbol of the migrants, carries its house on its back as the migrant carry their

households on the backs of ancients vehicles. The turtle’s horny beak and fierce, humorous eyes

resemble both the grim determination and the quick capacity for joy in the migrants. All the

oppressions that are done under the sun behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had

no comforter and on the side of their oppressors there was power but they had no comforter.

Throughout Steinbeck’s work blood lust of the perverse run like a thread that dominates

the pattern and again fades into the tranquility of exhaustion and acceptance, dissolve in the soft

snare for sentimentality. Only in “The Grapes of Wrath” do they merge in such away as to

remove the taint of degeneration and become an altogether praiseworthy demand for a self-

fulfillment in which action ceases to be associated with brutality and the ideal with helplessness.

American life will develop the potentialities that made possible “The Grapes of Wrath”.

For Steinbeck, like his own characters, will pursue the weak side of his talent unless the forces

that play upon him are imperative to rally the strong. He can produce pages of beauty and
impact, preceded and followed by pages of sheer trash, the emptiness of which is only

accentuated by the pseudo grandeur or primitivism. He was acutely sensitive, penetrating

analysis of human feeling. For him life is worth living, flagellant and baffling.

Steinbeck viewed the world he shared with the character, of neither the contending party

that exploited him nor the one that curtly rejected him, but rather an entire society that had

wandered into a dehumanized wasteland by insisting on mindless conformity. Steinbeck refused

to take side in provincial conflicts, but he was passionately partisan in individuals’ struggles for

self-determination. Steinbeck presents an unfeeling world where any sign of human caring is

exploited as a weakness. Slim in “Of Mice and Men” can understand the situation and

momentarily ameliorate them, but he cannot cure them. George has been forced to destroy by his

own hand a dream that cannot be revived .His best works remain those in which self- conscious

characters transcend the frustration of the environment- “The Red Pony”, “The Grapes of

Wrath”, and “Cannery Row”—for these are the only novels in which Steinbeck becomes a

timeless artist rather than an American seer. His next best works are those early ones form. The

pastures of Heaven to “Of Mice and Men”, in which he present the pathetic defeats of

Naturalistic characters. “The Wayward Bus”, “Burning bright”, and “The Winter of Our

Discontent” are those which were spurred by a moralistic impulse to lecture suggest that when

Steinbeck became two concerned with peoples consciences, touch with his consciousness. The

pasture of Heaven, “Tortilla Flat”, “In Dubious Battle”, and “Of Mice and Men”, “The Red

Pony”, “The Grapes of Wrath”, “Cannery Row” and a dozen distinguished short stories cannot

fail to occupy a high place among contemporary American writers.

 Though man in a group loses his individual self yet this group prevents him from feeling

lonely. According to Coleman, loneliness arises from the inability to find meanings in one’s life.

Becker a psychologist also points “let it be stressed emphatically that the most difficult

realization for man is the possibility that life has no meaning”. Jim by joining the party

overcomes his loneliness. He tells Burton, I used to be lonely and I’m not any more”. Joining

the party makes alive.

Doc, the hero of The Cannery Row, is a lonely and set apart man, because like Dr. Burton

and Jim In Dubious Battle, he is not a part of any group. In a group, he seemed always alone,

even in the close contact. He is seen listening to the music all alone and repeating verses from

Black Marigold. Dr. Burton’s loneliness also arises from his bachelorhood. He neither eats nor

sleeps. Mac says, “He needs woman that would like him for a night, someone to feel near him”

(IDB, 49). Having no love or spouse is the major reason for the feeling of loneliness.

According to Sigmund Fraud, “the individual feels incomplete, if he is alone”.

. Like the migrant in “The Grapes of Wrath” and “Of Mice and Men”. The okies feels

lonely as they are isolated from their own countrymen who exploit. Candy and Crooks “Of Mice

and Men” have a temporary break from their loneliness, when they share Lennie’s dream buying

a piece of land. In “The Grapes of Wrath”, Muley is doomed to loneliness, as he does not leave

the land to which he once belonged while everybody in his family has left California.
Curley’s wife, in Of Mice and Men represents the loneliness of ranch life, no means of

entertainment. She roams all over the ranch, looking for human contact. Racial prejudice makes

Crooks, the Negro lonely character, who is treated as outcast. He lives in a small bunk house

where no one visits him. His loneliness forced on him, takes aggressive form. He longs for

companionship, as it becomes very difficult for him to conceal his pleasure.

In East of Eden, rejection by a dear one leads to loneliness in case of many characters.

Charles feels rejected by his father Cyrus Trask. He feels his father loves his step brother Adam

more. Charles loves his father more than Adam. He is jealous of Adam to the extent of

attempting to kill him, which separates him from his father and brother, making him lonely. He

tries to keep himself occupied in work to overcome loneliness. Adam feels lonely when his wife

Cathy leaves him. Cyrus Trask lives and dies, ‘lonely and alone’ in Washington because he

rejects one of his sons and remains rejected by the other. The story is repeated in the next

generation.

Steinbeck has deep understanding of human nature and he actually made a psychological

study of his character, gribbed by loneliness for various reasons such old age, disability, sexual

flaw and racial prejudice. He wrote many of his novels and short stories based on social

problems like the ‘haves’ verses ‘have not’ and made the readers want to encourage the

underdog. His background and concern for the common man made him one of the best writers

for human rights. He raises his novels for the rights of the dispossessed migrant laborers. He

draws the attention of the Americans to their plight, agony and miserable in human conditions.
 Steinbeck’s battle for them however does not end here, as, in “The Grapes of Wrath”.

He focuses attention once again on the poor laborers, who of course are victim of circumstances,

nature and mechanization, but are also a helpless deliberately exploited, miserable human being.

Steinbeck draws attention to the fact that the haves exploit the have nots. This naturally leads to

class conflict, a major themes of his novels.

Ever since society was divided into classes, the exploiters and the exploited who engaged

in a irreconcilable struggle. The Class relationship grew more active during the 30’s and class

consciousness more pronounced. The 30’s not only brought depression but also an era of large

scale labor struggle against the land owners. Most of the trouble was in the docks and in the

packing sheds and fields. The battle between the land owners and the migrant laborers made a

profound impact on Steinbeck. The capitalist class consist of the big land owners, the ‘land

monopolists ‘ who made profit from the sale of agricultural goods whose prices sky rocketed, but

the laborers had no share in the profit and was unpaid. The agricultural scene in California in

1930’s, particularly in Salinas Valley differed from that of the rural areas elsewhere because

California farms were like large farm factories, owned by big operators and banks employing

hundreds of workers, many of them, migrants.

The apple orchards in Torgas Valley in I In Dubious Battle are owned by a few man and so are

the farms in California in” The Grapes of Wrath,” where the land owners are “ No longer farmers

at all, but little shopkeepers of crops, manufactures who must sell before they can make”. The

haves in Steinbeck’s novels are well organized. They have association like the growers

association as in and the California farmers association as in “The Grapes of Wrath”. The

capitalists have pretty well organized the Torgas Valley. The haves have behind them all the
power that money confers. All the members of the association are loyal to it and the sympathies

of the have notes like Mr. Anderson are mercilessly tortured. While the haves are well organized

and powerful as the officials, the banks, the stock holders etc are members of the associates; the

have not are the aware of their plights. The haves always intervene and prevent them from

forming any kind of organization. In The Grapes of Wrath the haves keep the have notes moving

so that they may not organized, if they do so, they may grab their land. The land owners fear that

if they are allowed to organize, they can refuse to work and may wipe out the season’s crop.

Casy, In The Grapes of Wrath takes up the task of organizing the workers to stand against in

justice of the land owners, he is brutally murdered.

The demand as the time and the situation was an organized labor union which was

possible only through communist leadership. Steinbeck has exposed the inhuman tactics of the

communist in the novel through Mac and Jim. The condition prevailing in the American society

interpreted from the Marxists point of view are to be overcome through communism. The

demand of situation cannot be altered through discussions but action and communism. He also

up held communism as means to better society, through change for the weaker section. He

believes that the communist is an human, subject to the weakness and greatness of the humans.

In Steinbeck’s novels exploitation is in chain. In Dust bowl area of The Grapes of Wrath,

it is the bank of the finance company which forces the tenant farmers to evict from their land

through owners because they breathe profits they eat the interest on money. The bank has to have

profit all the time. The owners are helpless, because all of them are caught in a system which is

larger than themselves. He writes about the agony and helplessness of the small farmers the

ordinary people, how their freedom is curtailed as they are totally dependent on the banks and
the finance companies for crop loan. The have not’s have no means of conveying a true picture

of their distressed situation. They are unable to raise their voice from any forum. Their feelings

are never conveyed to the government of the public. It is only the voice of the haves that reaches

government. The mass media only projects the news of the land owners and not the migrant

laborers.

The haves exploit the have not in a pre planned way. The means of exploitation in “In

Dubious Battle” and “The Grapes of Wrath” are almost similar. The capitalists always exploit

the proletariat through wage cut. Marx a critic writes in this connection, “the general tendency of

the capitalist production is not to rise but to sink the average standard of wages and the will is

certainly to take as much as possible”. As a part of their program of exploitation, the owners of

the apple orchards of Torgas Valley “In Dubious Battle” announce wage cut because they know

that by then the workers would have spent most of their money in reaching Torgas Valley and

they would have to work in the orchard to make up for the loss. Steinbeck, in his article, writes

about the helplessness of the migrants, who are forced to work on low wages.

Besides wage cut, the exploiters have other means of exploitation. The owners pay the

men and sell them food and thus make money back. They give food on credit. He writes in “The

Grapes of Wrath”, “A man might work and feed himself and when the work was done, might

find that he owed money to the company. In “The Grapes of Wrath” too, the land owners

exploit the migrants by wage cut. They advertised for the large number of worker than the actual

number requirement, when there is surplus of workers, they declare wage cut. The migrants

struggled hard against hunger. Even the medical facility is not provided to the have not’s.

Country hospitals are closed the have not only dump fruits into the river but also use cruel
methods to prevent the poor from fishing them out, give rise to wrath in the hearts of have not’s.

Thousands of people like the Joads in “The Grapes of Wrath” are forced to sell their household

goods and equipment which they could not load in their truck. They are miserable, poor,

oppressed as hunger is the mother of all crime. Rosasharn gives birth to a still born child because

she did not have nourishing food. At the end of the novel, she breast feeds a stranger who is

close to death. Hunger has left them weak and prone to diseases. Steinbeck highlights the misery

of the migrants by showing them in contrast with the wealthy tourists who are also travelling on

Highway 66. The migrants are moving west in search of food, bread, while the capitalist go to

throw the money in pleasure trips.

It is this fury which is seen bubbling in the form of small outburst and complains in the

novels of Steinbeck. This fury is not suppressed but forces laborers to unit and fight against the

exploiters.

That is what they attempt “In Dubious Battle” and “The Grapes of Wrath”. The hatred

is the outcome of the vicious, evil system created by the capitalists. Beside land owner the

storekeeper in the town, hate them because they have no money to spend. Capitalists hate and

consider every person prosting against profit system, they say a red is any son of bitch that wants

30 cents an hour when we’re paying.

The strike “In Dubious Battle” and “The Grapes of Wrath” is for similar reason. The

haves bring different methods such as bribery, threat to crush strike. Strikers are blamed for

every single incident or violence by the capitalist which is pointed out as a serious public
menace. A parallel can be drawn between “Paradise lost” and “In Dubious Battle”. Mac is of

the opinion that “In Dubious Battle” is a process for filing hatred in the hearts of the exploited

against exploiters, a revolution against hungers and cold. In Paradise Lost Satan arouses the will,

the courage of his follower to fight against God, an evil fighting to over throw good. In novel it

is reverse; fight is for the right, courage to overthrow satanic power- the Capitalist.

The class struggle may vary between passive resistance to a hostile class conflicts. It may

be open and concealed, spontaneous and conscious. Focus is primarily on the misery of migrant

workers in “The Grapes of Wrath”. “In Dubious Battle” focus is on strike and reasons for

strike of the dispossessed. As Lenin says, unity is infinitely precious and important to the

working class. Disunited, the workers are nothing, united they are everything.

The stark and passionate version is that the world is still being ruled by some powerful

people who by their treacherous trickery try to make the life of powerless people somber and

sad. Such people make the paradigm of irresponsibility and there is no end of it. But it is also

true that a time will come when the powerless people would not pass into oblivion but would rise

again fresh to face the atrocities of life vigorously and with courage and determination.

In” The Grapes of Wrath” the Joad family stands as the symbols of hope and they run

in search of the elusive green pastures. It is the undaunted will that keeps them going and at any

stage they, as a family, refuse to accept defeat and hopelessness. The natural loss whether in the

form of other family members or their prospects are acknowledged as a matter of fact and

accepted in their stride. The positive tone which echoes through the end of the novel reveals the
triumph of human spirit. The vagrancies of nature, manifested through land, are in tune with the

extent of compatibility between man and Nature. The dry dust-bowls of Oklahoma reflect the

dried up concern of man of land. It is by the reckless ways of man that land has been rendered

fallow. Grandma and Grandpa Joad symbolize the force that is opposite to evolution and change.

Grandpa’s death is only a physical process as he died the moment he was evicted out of his

home. The death of Grandma, while crossing over the desert into the state of California, is

symbolic of shedding behind the past for the Joad family. Even some of the characters symbolize

realities that encounter the Joad family. For example, Jim Casy, the preacher who declares that

he is no more one, is a reluctant messiah who fails to deliver the people. Tom Joad is more like

Moses who has the command to propagate. Avery significant symbol which has gone intangible

all along is the smashed face of Tom Joad; the moment he emerges a staunch communist, his

face is smashed in the scuffle and he now loses his identity and has emerged a Red leader,

fighting for a cause.

Ma Joad become a towering figure as she start bearing the burden of the family and she is

the hope and perseverance of the ‘Okies’. Her role as the nurturer of the family makes her the

Great Mother. Rose of Sharon, at the close of the novel, by nursing an old man, assumes the role

of Mother Earth who causes life to be revived and rejuvenated. The flooding in the last part of

the novel is a symbolic deluge which washes away those that are unfit for the struggle for

survival.

“The Grapes of Wrath” starts with he life and death of sub-human being like the turtle and then

the pet dog. Then Granma Joad die even before reaching California. It is the death of the lady

that offers interesting study. As they cross the desert in the battered truck, she dies on top of it

and Ma, in an effort to cover it up from the authorities; sleeps alone, next to the dead body. The
desert symbolizes the smotheing of life and the valley of fertility that lies just beyond rejuvenates

the dying hopes of the families. Then there is the death of Casy, which brings in a

metamorphosis in Tom. His life is infused into the being of Tom and it is a new life that is

assumed by him as he takes in his hands, the responsibility of keeping alive the ideology

bequeathed on him by Jim Casy. But the most astounding exposition of the juxtaposition occurs

at the end, when Rose of Sharon delivers a still-born baby in the midst of a deluge, which is

more like a shriveled mummy, showing no sign of ever having been alive. But the mother of

death emerges the reviver of life when she nurses the dying old man who is almost dead, and

revives him.

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Agnes Mc Neill. A case Book on The Grapes of Wrath, Loyola University, Thomas Y. Crowell

Co., New York, 1843

An Editorial on The Grapes of Wrath, Collier’s Volume 104, No. 10, Sept.2, 1939, 54
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Bredal, A. Carl. “The Drinking Metaphor in The Grapes of Wrath.” Readings On “The Grapes of

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Brian Kate D.A review of The Grapes of Wrath in The Spectator, Volume 163, No.5803,

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Shilling law, and Wesley N.Tiffiiney, Jr. Tuscaloosa and London: U

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Philadelphia: Chelsia House Publishers, 2005. Print.

Coers, V.Donald and Paul D. Ruffin et al. After the Grapes of Wrath: Essays

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