Analysis of Grapes Of Wrath Essay

The Grapes of Wrath: Summary

The book Grapes of Wrath was written by John Steinbeck, written in 1939, this book reflects the hardship and oppression suffered by migrant laborers during the Great Depression. There is exactly no specific main characters. Tom Joad just got out of prison for murder. His mother is the moral center of the family. His brother, Noah, is brain damaged from childbirth, his sister,Rose of Sharonis married and pregnant. Tom's younger brother, Al, is only sixteen. The Joads plan to go to California to find work in the fields there. Almost immediately into the journey, the Joad family lose two members; the family dog, then Grampa Joad, who dies of a stroke. The Joads learn about Weedpatch, a government camp where the residents do not face harassment by police officers. When police officers stir up conflict, Tom gets in trouble and flees with the rest of the family. At the government camp, the Joads are happy of the conditions there and even find jobs. The wages they receive are higher than normal. The Joads attempts to keep Tom's identity and location a secret, but it gets spilled out. When Ma tells Tom about this, he decides to go off on his own, and vows to return to his family one day. After Tom left the family, a massive flooding occurs and the Joads cannot escape the flooding because Rose of Sharon is in labor and delivers a stillborn child that gets sent in a box down the creek. Later the tiresome family finds themselves nursing a dying man to nurse him back to health.

The Grapes of Wrath: Analysis

The book Grapes of Wrath is a very interesting story about the great depression in which occurred about half a century ago by the famous author, John Steinbeck. The preconceptions I had before reading this book was that the author was going to tells exactly how the dust bowl of the 1950s affected the grapes in America because I knew that during this time there was a huge drought in the America and windstorms killing farms. I enjoyed reading this book because it told me about the hard times people face during the dust bowl. The thing that motivated me to read to the end was the fact that I wanted to know how the Joads family would come out at the end from their struggle. My initial impression of the works purpose was informative, I learned how people were being mistreated in the 1950s if you came from another state to California to look for a job and the hardship of workers that lost everything and traveled all the way to California to find out there are not that much jobs there to find. The book was fairly easy to read but I did have some words I needed to look up the definition of. The impression I received at the beginning of the book didnt change as I finished the whole story. This was because the author made clear about how the family had problems from place to place they went.

The type of literary style the author Steinbeck uses is in nonfiction prose, it includes travel history and history of the farmers journey of loosing homes, moving with their whole family on a long treacherous trip, their mistreatment from being outsiders, having to do labor for very low wages and loosing family members due to starvation and the suffering during the great depression. Steinbeck uses imagery to show the reader what the times were really like and allows the reader to put themselves right in the situation that the farmers and their families are in. The author also usesthe element of language which helps with the set up of the novel because most of the novel is conversations between the characters. The easy vocabulary of the book helps the reader really understand what is going on. The situation where Ma isyelling at everyone to wake up and get ready isjust like a home of today when the mother is trying to get family members up and they all complain and moan.

Reading this book I have learned that no matter what life throws at you, you always need family to help you through your problems. I won't kid you into believing that this is an easy book to read. The first 150 pages are so slow going that I almost had to put it down. But I kept on going just as the Joad's kept on going and I'm certainly glad I did. We could all take a lesson from their quest for survival and their quest just to be able to eat the next day. Their determination, in spite of all the obstacles they had to face, is truly a lesson to be learned. You feel a sense of accomplishment after reading a book like this, I know I did. The author did a real good job in depicting the situation of the farmers from the depression, what the conditions faced on their journey to find work and how they were treated by many unwelcoming residents. This book has not changed its form of writing from when it was written because it is considered an original American masterpiece throughout decades because of the way it is skillfully put together. The author sends through this book to the audience a universal message that identifies division as the primary source of evil and suffering in the world.