The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

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The Grapes of Wrath was written by John
Steinbeck, in 1929. Steinbeck was born on
February 27, 1902, in Salinas, California.
Steinbeck did not like to narrate any of his novels in which he had no background information in. That is why he would often live the life of his characters before he wrote his novels or short stories. So in preparation for The Grapes of Wrath he went to Oklahoma, joined some migrants and rode with them to California.

The Grapes of Wrath starts with Tom Joad, the main character, hitchhiking a ride home after being paroled from the state prison. The reason he was in jail is because four years ago he got into a bar fight and killed a man out of self defense. That is why he only got a seven-year sentence. He gets a ride from a trucker who drops him off in front of the road that leads to his house. Tom starts walking toward his house when he comes along a man named Jim Casy, who used to be a preacher. Casy tells Tom that he doesn’t preach anymore because he has lost the call.
He says that all things are holy, so why should he preach when the people are holy and he can just be with the holy people. Then
Casy joins Tom on the way to his house. When they get to the house, they find that it is deserted. They can’t imagine why, when they see something. They see Muley Graves, an old crazy neighbor of the Joad family. Muley tells them that his family went to their
Uncle John’s house. So Tom and Casy sleep in the fields for the night and then walk to
Uncle John’s in the morning.

When they get there, they notice everyone getting ready to leave. The family explains to Tom that the banks and large companies closed out all the farms and most of the farmers are heading out to California to find work. The family sold all their belongings and got a total of eighteen dollars for them.
Casy then joins them because he says he has to be where the people are. Then when they are ready to leave, Grandpa Joad has a fit and the family has to drug him to calm him down. So they leave Uncle John’s for
California. On the first night of the journey, Grandpa has a stroke and dies. They bury him and help a family named the Wilsons fix their broken-down car. The Joads and
Wilsons travel to California together and when they get to California, Mrs. Wilson gets sick and has to stop the trip. The Joads give the Wilsons some money and then leaves them.

En route to Calif...

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...rapes of Wrath
. They said that the book was all black lies.
Life magazine ran specials that proved that conditions were actually worse than Steinbeck told about. Many people thought that
Steinbeck was a communist after The Grapes of
Wrath was released. Now that the public isn’t offended by the novel we can realize that it is not a communist inspired document, but a work of art that illustrates the current troubles in that frame of American history.

I found the book interesting. I did not really like those chapters that popped up occasionally that didn’t deal with the plot, but helped explain the previous or following chapters. I am sure that if I had much trouble with a chapter that those chapters would have helped me, but fortunately I didn’t run into that problem. I had not realized the full extent of the great depression before reading The Grapes of Wrath
. I knew of the hardships of the suburbs, and urban areas of the great depression, but I was unaware of the hardships in the rural areas. Also it never struck me that the depression affected the west. I do not know why but I never thought of it that way.
Reading this novel helped me realize the full extent of the depresion.

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