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| 1939 novels | |
| novels by john steinbeck | |
| great depression fiction | |
| pulitzer prize for the novel | |
| bakersfield, california | |
''The Grapes of Wrath'' is a classic novel published in 1939 and written by John Steinbeck , who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize For The Novel and the Nobel Prize For Literature . It is frequently read in American high school and college literature classes. A celebrated Hollywood Film Version was made in 1940 , starring Henry Fonda and directed by John Ford , however, the endings differ greatly. Steinbeck wrote ''The Grapes of Wrath'' at his home, 16250 Greenwood Lane, in what is now Monte Sereno, California . Set during the Great Depression , the Novel focuses on a poor family of Sharecroppers , the Joads, driven from their home by Drought , economic hardship, and changes in the agriculture industry. In a nearly hopeless situation, they set out for California along with thousands of other " Okie s" in search of land, jobs, and dignity. The novel is meant to emphasize the need for cooperative, as opposed to individualistic, solutions to social problems brought about by the mechanization of agriculture and the Dust Bowl drought. PLOT SUMMARY The narrative begins from Tom Joad 's point of view just after he is Parole d from prison after serving four years for Manslaughter . On his journey home, he meets a preacher, Jim Casy , who he remembers from his childhood, and the two travel together. When they arrive at Tom's childhood farm home, they find it deserted. Disconcerted, he and Casy go to his Uncle John's residence a few miles away, where he finds his family loading a truck with everything they own for a move; he learns that his family's crops were destroyed in the Dust Bowl and that they were forced to default on outstanding loans. With their farm repossessed, the Joads seek solace in hope; hope inscribed on handbills that are distributed everywhere in Oklahoma , describing the beautiful country of California and high wages to be found out west. The Joads, along with Jim Casy, are seduced by this façade and invest everything they have into the journey (although leaving Oklahoma would be breaking parole, Tom decides that it is a risk, albeit minimal, that he has to take). En route, they discover that the roads and highways are saturated with thousands of other families making the same trek, ensnared by the same promise. As the Joads continue and hear stories from others, some coming back from California, they are forced to confront the possibility that their prospects may not be what they had hoped. This realization, supported by the deaths of Grandpa and Grandma and the departure of Noah (the eldest Joad son) and Connie (the husband of the pregnant Joad daughter, Rose of Sharon), is forced from their thoughts: they must go on because they have no other choice. Upon arrival, they find hordes of applicants for every job and little hope of finding a decent wage, because of the oversupply of labor, , the clean, warm camps operated by the Resettlement Administration , a New Deal agency that tried to help the migrants. However, the benevolent bureaucrat Jim Rawley who manages the camp does not have enough money and space to care for all of the needy. In response to the exploitation of laborers, the workers begin to join a starving man, still trying to show hope in humanity after her own negative experience. This final act is said to illustrate the spontaneous mutual sharing that will lead to a new awareness of collective values. Characters
Title Steinbeck had unusual difficulty devising a title for his novel. "The Grapes of Wrath", suggested by his wife, Carol Steinbeck, was deemed more suitable than anything the author could come up with. The title is a reference to '' The Battle Hymn Of The Republic '', by Julia Ward Howe : ''Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: These lyrics refer, in turn, to the biblical passage Revelation 14:19-20, an apocalyptic appeal to divine justice and deliverance from oppression in the final judgment. And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs. As might be expected, the image invoked by the title serves as a crucial symbol in the development of both the plot and the novel's greater thematic concerns: From the terrible winepress of Dust Bowl oppression will come terrible wrath but also the deliverance of workers through their cooperation. CRITICAL RECEPTION | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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