Grapes

Grapes

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck: Essay
John Steinbeck wrote his most acclaimed novel, The Grapes of Wrath, in the late 1930s due to his frustration of the heartless, affluent landowners and the gruesome actions of these “bullies” during the time of the Oklahoma Dust Bowl. He conveyed his infuriation with the immense amount of heartbreak and suffering in the novel by narrating a fictional, but also historical story about the Joad family and their journey and by expressing anger through characters, such as Tom Joad. The combinations of plot chapters and inter-chapters tied together a storyline and history, which in hand, created a better mental image of the tedious struggles that occurred within real families. This technique described the difficulty of survival and gave a better insight into the lives of not only a limited amount of individuals and their own dilemmas, but also the lives of people in a larger scale.
“There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success” (Steinbeck 349). The ultimate crime that Steinbeck emphasized in this chapter was the greed of the landowners; their manipulation and abuses of the land for profit has resulted in the distinct line between the poor and rich. Although Chapter 25, an inter-chapter, opened up with descriptions of fertile land and rich and plentiful produce, the scene abruptly changed from a thriving growing season to a setting of somber and morose conditions. The small farms struggled in selling their produce to large canneries due to competitive prices of the produce from the large farms. Therefore, small farms could not harvest their crops. As Steinbeck wrote, “In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage” (349). All over California, crops were burnt, workers were cheated, and people of all ages died from disease. As a result, anger...