"The Grapes of Wrath"

Paper Summary:

The paper discusses how, although "The Grapes of Wrath" was Steinbeck's major achievement, critics have been uncertain of the author's target audience. The paper explores the changing critical fashions that rendered the status of this novel uncertain and explains that while this book was viewed as a poignant commentary on capitalism, uncertainties surfaced regarding the audience and purpose of the novel. The paper contends that the author succeeds in gaining access to a large audience but because his novel fails to take sides, the book became a less than revolutionary attempt at changing things.

From the Paper:

"The novel served as an impassioned, objective and critical commentary on the lives of those who lived during the Depression era. There was the great economic slowdown hurting the lives of everyone especially those in the southwest and this triggered the mass migration to more industrialized states such as California. The Joad family was experiencing all these major problems every single day of their lives. To them, it was not a part of a larger process but persistent small changes which were seriously altering the way they had lived hitherto. When we read this commentary, the one question that inevitably surfaces is how the author planned to make a difference by discussing these issues. Such radical novels are not useless or meaningless and they have a target audience that author keeps in sight when commenting on the social and political issues of the time."

Sample of Sources Used:

• David Craig and Michael Egan, Extreme Situations: Literature and Crisis from the Great War to the Atom Bomb (London: Macmillan, 1979)
• Peter Lisca, The Wide World of John Steinbeck (New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1958)
• Warren French, The Social Novel at the End of an Era (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1966)
• John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (London: Pan, 1975)
• Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution, trans. Rose Strunsky (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1960)

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• Analytical Essay # 122529 : "The Grapes of Wrath" and John Steinbeck"
• Analytical Essay # 62461 : "The Grapes of Wrath"

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