The Grapes of Wrath and Steinbeck's Political Beliefs Steinbeck's relationship with the Transcendentalists [Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman] was highlighted soon after publication of The Grapes of Wrath by Frederick I. Carpenter, and as the 1930s fade into history, Jim Casy with his idea of ​​the sanctity of all men and the unreality of sin seems less a product of his narrowly doctrinaire age than a latter-day wanderer from the green village of Concord to the arid plains of the West. Although Steinbeck advocates collective action to achieve specific goals, only the most narrow-minded critics continue to argue that he is a collectivist in both philosophy and politics. Throughout his work he denounces the senseless indoctrination of totalitarians and argues that only through reflection on his bitter experience can one learn the value of acting in concert with others to alleviate emergency conditions – such as the flood at the end of The Grapes of Wrath. - so that the individual can subsequently be free to realize his or her potential. Nothing illustrates Steinbeck's concept of social organization better than the images in chapter seventeen of The Grapes of Wrath of the world that is created each night when people gather together and disappears the next morning when they part ways. In reference to the government camps in The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck never suggests that these camps should offer anything more than temporary relief during emergencies; he never suggests that the government should provide jobs to the people. We must also remember the camp director's comment that the people in the camp had taken his job away by taking on self-governing responsibilities. Steinbeck's endorsement... middle of paper... the question: How can any form of government avoid playing an ongoing role in shaping people's lives, both directly and indirectly? Simply to prove that Steinbeck was not being a socialist, a rather easy task nowadays thanks to the work of Steinbeck scholars in the 1960s and 1970s, does not mean that he was a conservative bastion of American individualism and an opponent of "big government" . Such a portrait of Steinbeck is as inaccurate as the socialist portrait exposed by French and Lisca. Works consulted French, Warren. A companion to The Grapes of Wrath. New York: The Viking Press, 1963. Hawgood, John A. America's Western Frontiers. New York: Alfred P. Knopf, 1967. Jones, Evan. The Plains States. New York: Time Life Books, 1968. Steinbeck, John. The grapes of wrath. New York: The Sun Dial Press, 1939.