"Like William Faulkner and Willa Cather, John Steinbeck wrote his best novels about the region in which he grew up and the people he knew since childhood..." Paul McCarthy Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Steinbeck's novels about ordinary people and the problems that plague them have earned him a reputation as one of America's greatest writers. He has used various forms, from short story to allegory to moral dramas, but his approach is consistently realistic. Critics often feel that realism is marred by its sentimentality, but Steinbeck's clear, energetic writing and his sensitive treatment of his characters are considered its strengths. Granville Hicks' 1939 review in The New Masses declared The Grapes of Wrath an exemplary proletarian novel, noting that "Steinbeck's vision of capitalism illuminates every chapter of the book." Yet another critic, Joseph Fontenrose, is of the opinion that “The Grapes of Wrath is a product of Steinbeck's experience and direct observation; his realism is genuine.” Telling a story is a difficult task, but telling it with the essence of the environment in which it takes place definitely requires great efforts on the part of the writer. The Grapes of Wrath, one of the most brilliant and innovative novels of the period, can be read not just as fiction but as a social document of the era, a documentation of drought conditions, economic problems and sharecropping life. Not separate from the imaginary, this level of recording is a vital aspect of it. The novel is an accurate and moving account of mass migration during the American Depression. Steinbeck highlights social injustice, traditional religious beliefs, the implications of the transcendentalist belief that each person is a part of the oversoul and that individual actions cannot be interpreted as right or wrong. The family as a source of strength for its members and for the community as a whole is another important theme of the book. The document clarifies the nature of family life and small farming and also the underlying concepts. One of the most important themes is the traditional agrarian idea of ​​simple rural life based on the principles of natural rights. Those who live and work the land, who pay for it with blood, sweat and toil, own the land. Muley Graves believes it, and up to a certain point the Joads believe it too. The Joad family is a universal symbol of the need for group effort and support to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number of people. The world presented to us in Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath has an unrelenting quality, in which, at every turn, great and invisible forces seem to operate on vulnerable humans. The tractors razing Oklahoma farms, the bankers evicting farmers from their land, the Joad family's move across the country to California, the deaths that mark the family's journey, and the rising flood that surrounds the characters in the last chapters of the novel, they all make us feel the impotence of the individual compared to the effects of nature and the economy. To the story of Tom Joad and his family, their long, unstable and troubled journey west, their strenuous efforts to make a living in California, and the bitter resistance they encounter among the rich, gluttonous, and selfish landowners, Steinbeck has added a broad blueprint of things as they really were at the time the novel was written. It is his conception of the supersoul, the soul of the world of which every individual has his own modest and particular part. Jim Casy, expreacher and future martyr, expresses this idea: "Perhaps all men have a great soul and everyone is part of it". That doctrine is also the philosophical basis of the famous speech Tom Joad gives to his mother after Casy is killed. Tom Joad is about to leave, to continue the whole fight in hiding. His mother asks: “How will I know about you? They could kill you and I wouldn't know." Tom laughs uncomfortably and says, “Well, maybe like Casy says, a boy doesn't have a soul of his own, but just a piece of a big soul and then... then it doesn't matter. Then I'll be walking around in the dark. I'll be everywhere, wherever you look. Everywhere there's fighting so the hungry can eat. Wherever there's a cop beating a boy, I'll be there that boys scream when they're angry and... I'd be the way boys laugh when they're hungry and know dinner's ready And when our people eat what they raise and live in the houses they build, well, I'll be there. See?" (Steinbeck 385) The Joads refuse to let their circumstances break them. They retain their poise, nobility and self-esteem, despite the trials and tribulations that befall them. Hunger, tragic death and mistreatment by the authorities do not break their spirit. Their dignity in the face of tragedy contrasts with the cowardice of wealthy landowners and policemen who treated migrant workers like criminals. No matter how much misfortune and degradation is heaped on the Joads, their sense of justice, family, and honor never wavers. Steinbeck believed that as long as people maintained a sense of injustice, a sense of anger against those who sought to undermine pride in themselves, they would never lose their dignity. Tom Joad is the symbol of all the mistreated working poor who refuse to be beaten. To appreciate The Grapes of Wrath as a tale of its time, it is worth taking a look at the burning issues of the era in which it was written. The book is set during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Tough times were made even tougher in Oklahoma and four other states when drought and poor farming methods led to wind erosion of topsoil. The Great Plains became known as “the Dust Bowl.” Nearly two million tenant farmers were forced off their lands because they were unable to pay rent to the banks that owned their farms. A third of a million agricultural workers left the Dust Bowl for California, where they believed they could live off the rich, fertile land. However, there were many more migrant farmers than jobs, allowing landowners to treat workers very badly. That aside, the 1930s were a decade of staggering unemployment in America: it reached 25 percent in 1933 and was still hovering around 19 percent in 1938, the year Steinbeck set The Wrath. He spared no effort in attributing part of the blame for the catastrophic conditions to the "Bank", the "Society" and the "State"; that is, to faceless and bloodless corporate, institutional, and bureaucratic organizations, so that his novel has an extremely harsh and angry edge, although it offers no practical answers for a population displaced by the transition from agricultural to industrial economies. The migration of hundreds of thousands of people westward was a major cultural phenomenon of the 1930s. Steinbeck's sentimental depiction of that phenomenon is another example of The Grapes of Wrath as a form of social document. From the beginning of the novel we get dark vibes from the description of the Dust Bowl, the event that causes everything that happens in the rest. of the novel. We see the “earth” become encrusted and the “sky” become “pale”, “pink in the red country and white in the countrygrey". (Steinbeck 5) The description is like that of a wasteland, where “Men and women huddled in their homes, and tied handkerchiefs over their noses when they went out, and wore glasses to protect their eyes (Steinbeck 6)” Later we see that the people's almost futile struggle against the dust is exemplified in his account of how "the houses were closed tightly, and the clothes stuck around the doors and windows, but the dust came in so much so thin that it could not be seen in the air, and it settled like pollen on chairs and tables, on plates (Steinbeck 6).”The novel also attacks the same assumptions about private property and class difference on which the social order ideologically rests. Far from being simply racist, it presents one of the most radical critiques of the social order in all of popular – and canonical – literature. Therefore, his political intervention has been, is and probably will remain contradictory. We see in the novel that the Joads, like many thousands of other families, are forced to sell their belongings at ridiculously low prices before leaving for California. What doesn't sell must be burned, even items of sentimental value that simply can't be taken on a trip due to lack of space. Steinbeck is explicit about the humiliating process of selling obsolete goods. As we see in chapter 9, “You're not just buying junk, you're buying junk lives. And what's more, you'll see, you'll buy bitterness (Steinbeck 80).” The farmers have tied their feelings to their possessions (which is quite natural), they have associated life and death with their lands and letting go of their possessions brings them nothing but pure disappointment and utter pain. Steinbeck highlights the helplessness of these poor farmers forced to act against their will. The narrative voice that expresses the inner feelings of the farmers makes the readers fully experience what they must have experienced during the migration: “you are buying years of work, of toil under the sun; you're buying a pain that can't speak. But look at him, sir. There is a prize that accompanies this pile of junk and the bahi horses, so beautiful, a package of bitterness to grow in your home and let flourish, one day. We could have saved you, but you struck us down, and soon you will be struck down and there will be none of us to save you (Steinbeck 81).” The feelings of these peasants, their defenselessness against the forced pressure of capitalist society and their plight are expressed so vividly that the reader cannot help but appreciate the writer's minute observation. We find depths of pain in these farmers' helpless questions: “How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past? No. Leave it alone. Burn it (Steinbeck 82).” Another example of the natural association with land and possessions can be seen in the death of the grandfather. He could not dissociate and separate himself from the place he thought he owned. Casy is very right when he says that, after his grandfather's death, “he was always a fool. I think he knew. A grandfather did not die tonight. He died the moment you took him away from that place (Steinbeck 134)." And further he says, "He's just staying with the earth." He couldn't leave him. (Steinbeck 134). In fact, The Grapes of Wrath probably became a place of confrontation between the anti-capitalist consciousness of the 1930s and the American racist tradition - between manifest destiny and manifest exploitation and expropriation Viewed from a Marxist perspective, one can gain a very vivid understanding of the novel's bitter capitalist issues Marxist examines the economic and governmental system that Steinbeck uses in the novel and reveals that he actually believes that thecapitalism is naturally flawed. According to Mary Klages, “Marxists want to analyze social relations in order to change them, to alter what they see as the grave injustices and inequalities created by capitalist economic relations (Klages 126).” In The Grapes of Wrath, we see Steinbeck address this ideal and reveal what he believes regarding this topic. It begins its grand confrontation with capitalism, creating the sense that there are two classes with a third stuck somewhere in the middle. At first, Tom Joad wants to hitch a ride from a driver who has a "No Riders" sticker on his truck. Tom makes the driver feel bound and twisted in his emotions and moral feelings when he says, "sometimes a boy will be a good boy even if some rich bastard makes him wear a sticker...the driver has considered the parts of this answer. If he refused now, not only would he not be a good guy, but he would be forced to wear a sticker and not be allowed to have company.” The driver is forced to believe that to be a " good boy" must put aside his pride and help others. Tom tries to make the driver understand that a man doesn't need to work for "some rich bastard" to be a decent person. Then again in chapter 5, more that the coming of the dust, the arrival of the bankers is a disturbing event. For Steinbeck, banks have no redeeming value. They are completely devoid of human characteristics. They are monstrosities that “breathe profits” and can never be satiated the bank is inhumane and that the owner of the bank with fifty thousand acres is a "monster". “The bank is something different from men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men have made it, but they cannot control it (Steinbeck 32).” A bank is made by men but it is something more and separate from people, a destructive force that pursues short-term profits at the expense of the land, destroying it through cotton production that drains the land of its resources. The poor farmers do not know who to blame, who to curse and who to "shoot" for their suffering. The dialogue between the sharecropper and the tractor driver illustrates how widespread the corporate system of control is. If a farmer wanted to stop the bank, he couldn't target an individual or even a small group; Even if a farmer killed the bank president, that wouldn't stop the eviction process. The people are helpless." But where does it stop? Who can we shoot? I do not intend to starve before I kill the man who is starving me (Steinbeck 37).” We find this same futile struggle of the peasants to locate the focus of their miseries throughout the novel. Where should they go? Who should they blame and what course of action should be taken in such circumstances? Steinbeck highlights all these bitter and yet so realistic questions of those times, ending up focusing more only on the extreme resistance on the part of the sufferers. The narrative becomes surprisingly captivating in chapters where it highlights the voices of farmers complaining about the capitalist system: “is a tractor bad? Is the power that traces the long furrows wrong? If this tractor were ours it would be beautiful: not mine, but ours. If our tractor turned the long furrows of our land, it would be beautiful. Not my land, but ours. We would love that tractor then as we loved this land when it was ours. But this tractor does two things: it turns the earth and takes us away from the earth. There is little difference between this tractor and a tank. People are led, intimidated, hurt by both. We have to think about itthis (Steinbeck 138).” Conditions for farm workers during the Depression era were as bad or worse than those of sharecroppers and sharecroppers in the South. Although there was a small permanent workforce on California farms, the vast majority of labor was needed at harvest time and was performed by migrant workers who followed the crops as they ripened over the course of a six-month harvest season. By the 1930s, pay and working conditions had been terrible for at least sixty years. Migrant workers had few assets, lived in substandard company housing or makeshift camps, and had to provide their own transportation, usually ancient "jalopies." Their children had limited or no access to schools and had little healthcare, making malnutrition and preventable diseases common. Steinbeck completed the description of this difficult period by illustrating people's hopes to earn decent wages and eventually purchase their own land. And he included historical content to illustrate the interactions between different people who endured life in the Depression, whether they were rich or poor, landowners or renters, or struggling corporations or small businesses. The constant struggle of these workers can be summed up in the words of Ma Joad as they are bewildered at a point in their journey. He tells Tom: “you have to be patient. Well, we people will continue to live when all those people are gone. Because, Tom, we are the living people. They will not destroy us. Because, we are the people, let us go forward (Steinbeck 258).” One of Steinbeck's main messages in the novel is that socialist revolt is the way to solve economic problems. He is of the opinion that people must unite for the survival of the entire humanity, as he says: "This is the beginning, from 'I' to 'We'." He is of the opinion that, "If you are in trouble, hurt or need: go to the poor people. They are the only ones who will help you, the only ones.” We observe that the central artistic problem is to present the universal and the epic in terms of the individual and the particular Steinbeck chooses to address this problem by creating an individual and particular image of the epic experience of the dispossessed Okies by focusing sustained attention on the experience. of the Joads. The result is an organic combination of structures. The characterization of these Joads is very interesting Joad a specific individual and specifying that what happens to the Joads is typical of the times. It is fascinating to note the means that Steinbeck uses to maintain the identities of these less important characters are given highly specific tags, for example the grandmother's religion,. Grandpa's vigor, Uncle John's melancholy, and Al's love of cars and girls. Tags are involved in events; they are not lifeless labels. The grandmother's burial violates her religion; The grandfather's vigor ends when he leaves the earth; Uncle John's melancholy balances the family's experience; Al helps bring the family to California and, by marrying, continues the family. Mom, Dad, Rose of Sharon, and Tom carry the narrative forward, so their individuality is defined by events. But it is the psychological and moral center of the family; Pa carries his burdens; Rose of Sharon means guaranteeing its physical continuity; and Tom becomes its moral conscience. On a larger scale, there is a lot of evidence that what happens to the family is typical of the times. We learn that “the whole country is moving” or about to move. The Joads meet many of their colleagues or strangers who,,2012.