The Grapes of Wrath

A detailed Summary of The Grapes of Wrath

As the year 1930 comes along, an author by the name of John Steinbeck writes in detail a novel about the hardships of living at the times of the Great Depression, now is he the voice for all those in America? John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, in 1902. He was part German and part Irish. His father, John Ernst Steinbeck, was worked as a treasurer and his mother, Olivia Hamilton, worked as a teacher. He didn't have so much a hard childhood but what kid now a days would want to go work on the fields everyday? Steinbeck later attended Salinas High School and then later he went to Stanford University. He went to New York where he worked as a reporter, but was later fired. Later he became a writer where his first book Cup of Gold. He first kicked off his real career when he moved to Pacific Grove with his first wife. The 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath was a Pulitzer prize winner and was made into a movie in 1940. After that the rest of his life was just uphill until he died on December 20, 1968.

The Grapes of Wrath is a novel about the time of the depression. It was the time of the Dust Bowl and it was a really big disaster that took place in the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States in the 1930's. It including part

The first stop that the Joads made, gave them an idea that they might not be able to get a job when they get to California, because of all the jobs are already taken. But things could be worse they at least have a car and enough money to pay for gas. On their route they came across a restaurant where the Joads want to buy a loaf of bread for ten cents when it really costs fifteen cents. The woman that worked there figures that it would be a lot more easier to just send them on their way with what they want rather than them begging for it. But as time goes on so does the money, the family wasn't getting very much nutrition and were eating the bare minimum. When they would get into California getting into town wasn't easy the cops told them that they couldn't stay in town they had to go on the outskirts of town, which they called Hooverville it's supposedly where all of the Okies have to go. When they got all fixed up at the camp the cops told then that they would burn their stuff if they weren't gone by morning. The cops were always running them out of their camps it figured out that in many towns in California there ended up being a Hooverville. The towns put them there so the townspeople didn't have to see them.

Now that I've said that you have your own voice, which if you think about it, makes up America it's time to talk about how the book changed America. I think that it gave more knowledge about what happened. Before reading this book I really didn't know that there was anything called the dust bowl. What this book did was not just go on about an event but it gave an easy way of understanding it. It gave a realistic and entertaining story so it could explain better to the people around the world that wouldn't know about it unless this book was made. That's why I think this is a best seller. This book also made people look differently about the way things were back then. In The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck also helps us to be better observers of life, to see past stereotypes, and to be compassionate.

More on the book and what it really means, one thing that really stands out in the book is that the poor are the nice ones and they are the ones willing to give when they don't have much. A lot of people are out there to take advantage of the weaker or poorer ones out there. In the book some examples would be paying two and a half cents over five. It's all there because the big land owners want to make a profit. Comparing that to today you still see farmers hiring immigrants to work for cheap. Maybe that's what Steinbeck is getting at. Or you can be the nicest person in the world and be the poorest at the same time. So maybe that's where we answer our question about Steinbeck being the voice of America. He captured everything that could go wrong in The Grapes of Wrath. I do think that he is the voice of America because everything that he wrote about happens today. Those aren't all the reasons he's the voice of America, it's not like he knew that this kind of stuff would still be happening. Steinbeck is a really great author he writes about ordinary people.

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Approximate Word count = 2630
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Novels