The Grapes of Wrath: The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck Biography | Book Summary & Study Guide | CliffsNotes Bookmark this page Manage My Reading List Family and Education John Steinbeck was a man of experience first and words second. He lived passionately and observed both shrewdly and humanely, focusing on human struggles with the forces of nature around him and the passions within him. Using as its backdrop the tremendous beauty and epic power of the California land he knew so well, Steinbeck's writing strove to make meaning out of the hardships he saw. From his earliest memory, John Steinbeck wanted to be a serious writer. He was born on February 27, 1902, to a middle-class family in Salinas, California. His father, John Ernst, Sr., was a well-to-do miller and local politician, and his mother, Olivia Hamilton, taught school. Under his mother's influence, Steinbeck read widely and was influenced by many great authors: Eliot, Dostoevsky, Hardy, and most notably, Malory.

Malory's Morte d'Arthur, given to Steinbeck on his ninth birthday, took him away from his own middle-class existence and showed him the power of the theme of good versus evil. While Malory had a great influence on Steinbeck's writing style, Steinbeck described the syntactical rhythms and sweeping epic scope of the King James Bible as having the most lasting impression on his work. Never a scholar, Steinbeck spent a large part of his youth outdoors, working and playing in the Salinas Valley, midway up the California coast. This lush, fertile, and often harsh land would become the backdrop for his most enduring works. Although stifled by academic discipline, Steinbeck loved to write, publishing pieces in his high school paper, and later, in the student paper at Stanford University. Steinbeck's studies at the university often took a back seat to more active pursuits: he worked on ranches, in factories, did construction work, and was even a member of a road-building gang. Although he came from a strongly middle-class background, Steinbeck's experiences as a laborer provided him with the first-hand observations that would fuel so much of his writing. After five years of intermittent studies, he left Stanford without a degree.

Early Work In 1925, Steinbeck traveled to New York in an attempt to make a living as a writer. The city was not welcoming, however, and when it was suggested that he try writing advertising copy to break into the industry, Steinbeck said farewell. He completed a set of short stories, which was rejected by publishers, and returned to California. While working as a lodge caretaker in the Sierra Mountains, Steinbeck completed his first novel, a historical swashbuckler entitled Cup of Gold. However, success continued to elude the young writer. With monumental bad timing, his first novel was published in late 1929, just two months before the stock market crash changed the atmosphere of the entire country. According to Lewis Gannett, about 1,500 copies of the book were sold, but it was not taken seriously by the few critics who reviewed it. Shortly after the publication of Cup of Gold, Steinbeck eloped with a local girl named Carol Henning, and with his father's help, they set up home in the small community of Pacific Grove. Here Steinbeck met Ed Ricketts, the man who was to have the greatest influence on both his life and his work.

Ricketts, the proprietor of a marine specimen supply house on the outskirts of Pacific Grove, proved a perfect companion for Steinbeck: Both men loved to drink, think, and discuss life philosophies. Together they would develop a non-teological philosophy (focusing on the world as it is, not as it should or might be) that would figure prominently in the pragmatism of many of the main characters in The Grapes of Wrath. Ricketts would later be immortalized as "Doc" in Cannery Row. Steinbeck's first, and arguably best, novel to be set in California was published in 1932. Unfortunately, the Depression was in full swing, and the first two publishing houses that handled The Pastures of Heaven went broke before the novel could be bound. In 1933, the author published To A God Unknown, an unsuccessful allegory, and sold the first two parts of his short story, "The Red Pony." His first national recognition came when "The Murder" won the O. Henry Prize for short stories in 1934, and was cemented the following year with the strong commercial reception of Tortilla Flat.

The publication of this light-hearted tale about vagabonds on the Monterey peninsula marked the beginning of his association with Pascal Covici, the man who was to publish the rest of Steinbeck's major works. The critical reviews were mixed, but the novel proved popular enough with the reading public that Steinbeck was able to sell the movie rights for $3,000, a sum of money greater than any he had received before. After a trip to Mexico with Ed Ricketts and a change of residence to Los Gatos, a suburb of San Jose, Steinbeck settled down to write In Dubious Battle, a powerful study of a labor strike, which stirred up considerable critical controversy. The year 1936 proved to be a busy one for Steinbeck. Not only did he publish In Dubious Battle, he finished several short stories and was commissioned to write a series of articles for The San Francisco News about conditions in California migrant worker camps. These articles were published in October 1936, and later gathered together in a pamphlet entitled "Their Blood Was Strong." Steinbeck's experiences with these migrant workers would be the foundation on which he based The Grapes of Wrath.

Career Highlights Steinbeck became a celebrity with the publication of Of Mice and Men in 1937. The novel was well received both critically and popularly. Chosen as a Book-of-the-Month-Club selection, Of Mice and Men soon became a national bestseller. Steinbeck returned to New York in triumph and toured Europe. He eventually settled in the fashionable East Coast writers' colony of Buck's County, where he worked on the script of the play version of the novel with the famous playwright, George Kaufman. The play opened in late November 1937 to rave reviews, received the New York Drama Critic Circle's Award for Best Play, and enjoyed a long, successful run before being made into a theatrical film. Even Steinbeck's good fortune, however, could not save his publishing house from ruin. Pascal Covici would leave the financially defunct firm of Covici, Friede to become the executive editor of Viking Press, and Steinbeck would follow. In 1938, Viking published The Long Valley, a collection of Steinbeck's short stories. Although enjoying huge success both financially and critically, Steinbeck remained a man of the people.

He refused an offer from Life magazine to write about the migrant workers because he felt it would be wrong to make money off their misfortune. He continued to base his writing on actual experiences, living and working among the very folks he would use as material for his work. In fact, on the night that Of Mice and Men opened on Broadway, he was in a squatters camp with a group of migrants with whom he had traveled from Oklahoma. The Grapes of Wrath was published in 1939 and immediately caused a literary furor, well documented by Warren French. The top selling novel of 1939, it won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Booksellers Award, merits which supported Steinbeck's election to membership in the National Institute of Arts and Letters. A movie version of the novel was soon filmed and also received critical accolades. Although there are not specific financial records documenting the sale of the book, the numerous American printings and foreign translations would attest to a generous increase in Steinbeck's income. This likelihood is supported by the fact that his first wife, suing for divorce in 1942, received a $220,000 settlement.

In the years immediately following The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck, now somewhat of a literary celebrity, traveled and toiled primarily on war-related works. He and his best friend, Ed Ricketts, returned to Mexico twice. The first trip, in March 1940, is chronicled in The Sea of Cortez; the men returned the next month to film the semi-documentary film, The Forgotten Village. The work would occupy him for the remainder of the year. In 1942, he wrote an Army Air Force-commissioned book entitled Bombs Away, and donated the earnings of his play-novelette, The Moon Is Down, to the war effort. Perhaps as an antidote to the suffering he had seen in the war, Steinbeck published Cannery Row in 1945, a light-hearted romanticizing of the pre-war antics of the vagabonds and idlers of Monterey's Cannery Row. He followed in 1947 with what many consider his finest short story, "The Pearl," and the novel The Wayward Bus. The year 1948 marked several important events in Steinbeck's life.

He was elected into the American Academy of Arts and Letters and divorced from his second wife, Gwyn Verdon. Perhaps the most traumatic event of the year was the loss of his closest friend, Ed Ricketts, in an automobile accident. In 1950, Steinbeck married Elaine Scott. His third marriage seemed to invigorate him, and he began work on a new novel, an ambitious epic of good and evil set in his own Salinas Valley. East of Eden was published in 1952 to lukewarm critical reception. Steinbeck's output during the 1950s slowed, consisting mainly of magazine pieces and an unsuccessful rehashing of Cannery Row entitled Sweet Thursday. In 1961, Steinbeck re-emerged with The Winter of Our Discontent, and in 1962, he was awarded the world's highest literary recognition, a Nobel Prize for literature. Not content to settle down comfortably, Steinbeck took to the road in late 1961, armed with a stack of maps and an elderly poodle named Charlie. His adventures across the country were recounted in one of his last works, Travels with Charlie.

John Steinbeck died on December 20, 1968. The Grapes of Wrath Essay - The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck - eNotes.com The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck link Link The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck (Full name John Ernst Steinbeck Jr; also wrote under the pseudonym Amnesia Glasscock) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, poet, journalist, playwright, and screenwriter. See also The Chrysanthemums Criticism, John Steinbeck Short Story Criticisim, John Steinbeck Literary Criticisim (Volume 1), and Volumes 5, 9, 13, 21, 124. The following entry presents criticism on Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939). Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is distinguished by its lucid prose, engaging naturalistic descriptions, forceful symbolism, and examination of the myth of America as Edenic paradise.

Written after Steinbeck produced a series of articles for the San Francisco News about the mass exodus to California of thousands of Oklahoma and Arkansas farmers facing poverty and starvation due to the Great Depression and severe drought of the 1930s, The Grapes of Wrath caused an uproar of controversy and was one of the most commonly banned books of its time because of Steinbeck's obvious socialist sympathies. Nonetheless, the novel remains one of the most admired and studied works of social protest fiction of the twentieth century. Plot and Major Characters The Grapes of Wrath chronicles the migration of the Joad family, led by the matriarch Ma Joad, from the Dust Bowl of Oklahoma and Arkansas to the supposed Eden of California after drought and economic depression cause their small family farm to collapse. They are joined by Jim Casy, a former preacher, now disillusioned with religion, who sparks their evolution from a self-contained, self-involved family unit to a part of the migrant community that must work together for the greater good, and who inspires the Joads's son Tom to support the cause of the working poor.

Interspersed among the chapters dealing specifically with the Joads are chapters in which Steinbeck took a broader, more universal approach to illustrate the full force of the tragedy of the migrant farmers—commonly and disparagingly referred to as “Okies” and “Arkies”—of the 1930s. Simultaneously symbolic and journalistic, these chapters provide a historical overview of the events of the time not only for the displaced farmers but also for American society as a whole, which, according to Steinbeck, must bear the responsibility and the consequences for its callous treatment of the working poor. During the course of their travels, the family's dog is hit by a car, and both of the grandparents die. Then Rose of Sharon, the Joads's pregnant daughter, is deserted by her husband. When the Joads—and all those like them—finally make their way to California, they expect to find themselves in a kind of paradise with plenty of well-paid work available. Instead they find an oversaturated work market where they are forced by hunger and desperation to work as scabs in migrant camps.

Casy tries to organize the workers and is murdered by a thug who works for the farm owners, and Tom Joad, who has already violated his parole by leaving Oklahoma, must go into hiding after killing Casy's murderer. Finally, the migrants face a disastrous flood, during which Rose of Sharon's baby is stillborn. In the ultimate affirmation of the Joads's recognition of their membership in the human family, Rose of Sharon gives her breast milk to a starving migrant man in order to save his life. Major Themes The Grapes of Wrath is in one sense a documentary account of American socioeconomic events of the 1930s. Photojournalists recorded the suffering of the people of the Dust Bowl region, and Steinbeck was strongly influenced by the widely published photographs, including those in the book You Have Seen Their Faces, by Erskine Caldwell and Margaret Bourke-White. Steinbeck's interest in the plight of farmers in the face of rapidly encroaching agribusiness and his sympathy for union organizers became important themes in the novel, along with the struggles of the average person against big business. But beyond the depiction of historical events is Steinbeck's symbolism.

Jim Casy, although he is a reluctant preacher, serves as a Christlike figure, leading the Joads and the workers to consider the higher purposes of the community over their own individual interests. Ma Joad, with her considerable inner strength, and Rose of Sharon, particularly in the final scene of the novel, are earth-mother symbols who instinctively understand their roles as nurturers. This religious symbolism—both Christian and non-Christian—pervades the novel. Images of exodus, plague, and the search for paradise, as well as of the sanctity of the land, dominate the farmers' travels to the West. Critical Reception While The Grapes of Wrath is praised by most critics for the universality of its themes, it is sometimes faulted by others for excessive sentimentalism and melodrama. Initial reception of The Grapes of Wrath was distorted because the book caused a maelstrom of political controversy due to its castigation of agribusiness and the governmental system that contributed to the Dust Bowl predicament. The press and politicians attempted to discredit Steinbeck's book, accusing him of socialist sympathies.

With its political implications now defused, critical study of The Grapes of Wrath has more recently focused on Steinbeck's religious and nature symbolism and the role of his female characters, which earlier critics had considered stereotypical and one-dimensional. But regardless of critical opinion, The Grapes of Wrath remains one of the most respected modern American novels. Start Free Trial Start your free trial with eNotes to access more than 30,000 study guides. Get help with any book. Cup of Gold: A Life of Henry Morgan, Buccaneer, with Occasional References to History (novel) 1929 The Pastures of Heaven (novel) 1932 To a God Unknown (novel) 1933 Tortilla Flat (novel) 1935 In Dubious Battle (novel) 1936 Nothing So Monstrous (short stories) 1936 Saint Kay the Virgin (short stories) 1936 Of Mice and Men (novel) 1937 Of Mice and Men: A Play in Three Acts [with George S.

Kaufman] (drama) 1937 The Red Pony (novella) 1937 The Long Valley (short stories) 1938 The Grapes of Wrath (novel) 1939 The Forgotten Village (novel) 1941 Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research (travel book) 1941 The Moon Is Down (novel) 1942 The Moon Is Down: Play in Two Parts (drama) 1942 How Edith McGillicuddy Met R.L.S. (short stories) 1943 Cannery Row (novel) 1945 The Wayward Bus (novel) 1947 Burning Bright: A Play in Story Form (novel) 1950 East of Eden (novel) 1952 Viva Zapata!

(screenplay) 1952 The Crapshooter (short stories) 1957 The Short Reign of Pippin IV: A Fabrication (novel) 1957 The Winter of Our Discontent (novel) 1961 Travels with Charley: In Search of America (nonfiction) 1962 John Steinbeck: Grapes of Wrath and Other Works - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com John Steinbeck: Grapes of Wrath and Other Works Watch short & fun videos Start Your Free Trial Today An error occurred trying to load this video. Try refreshing the page, or contact customer support. You must create an account to continue watching Register for a free trial Are you a student or a teacher? I am a student Start Your Free Trial To Continue Watching As a member, you'll also get unlimited access to over lessons in math, English, science, history, and more. Plus, get practice tests, quizzes, and personalized coaching to help you succeed. Coming up next: Of Mice and Men: Summary and Analysis of Steinbeck's Style You're on a roll. Keep up the good work!

Your next lesson will play in 10 seconds 0:05 John Steinbeck 0:51 The Grapes of Wrath 2:23 Style and Themes Add to Add to Add to Want to watch this again later? Log in or sign up to add this lesson to a Custom Course. Custom Courses are courses that you create from Study.com lessons. Use them just like other courses to track progress, access quizzes and exams, and share content. Teachers Organize and share selected lessons with your class. Make planning easier by creating your own custom course. Students Create a new course from any lesson page or your dashboard. From any lesson page: Click "Add to" located below the video player and follow the prompts to name your course and save your lesson. From your dashboard: Click on the "Custom Courses" tab, then click "Create course". Next, go to any lesson page and begin adding lessons. Edit your Custom Course directly from your dashboard. Personalize: Name your Custom Course and add an optional description or learning objective. Organize: Create chapters to group lesson within your course. Remove and reorder chapters and lessons at any time. Share your Custom Course or assign lessons and chapters.

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Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California in 1902. He grew up and lived for many years in the Monterey Bay area. This area may be about as close to Eden as you'll find. There's terrific farmland, beautiful scenery and, of course, the Pacific Ocean. Steinbeck would immortalize the area in a multitude of novels. We're going to spend a little time on The Grapes of Wrath, his most notable work, then quickly review the rest of his impressive literary legacy. The Grapes of Wrath Many people consider The Grapes of Wrath to be Steinbeck's greatest novel. In fact, it won the National Book Award, a Pulitzer and helped earn Steinbeck the Nobel Prize. Published in 1939, it's the tale of the Joad family. Tom Joad is the central character, but his entire family is part of the story. They're tenant farmers from Oklahoma during the Great Depression. When their crops are destroyed in the Dust Bowl, they decide to head west for the promise of greener pastures in California. They hope to become fruit pickers there. But everyone else who is suffering seems to have the same idea. The road is clogged with other poor travelers.

They meet all kinds of fellow 'Okies,' as they're derogatively called, either heading the same way or returning after not finding what they'd hoped for. When they get to California, the Joads find that there's a surplus of workers and the big corporate farmers are running the show. They move from camp to camp, but as newcomers, they get shunned by their fellow laborers. There are just not enough jobs to support everyone who arrives in California. There are arguments over whether the workers should organize into unions or not. Meanwhile, the authorities threaten to run them all out. The Joads finally find decent work picking fruit, but then they realize they were hired as strikebreakers. Tom Joad undergoes a transformation and realizes his destiny is to lead the workers and help them organize. Doing so, though, means abandoning his family. The novel ends with them no better off than when they started, though there is a glimmer of hope for the future. Steinbeck's Style and Themes The themes in The Grapes of Wrath are not unusual for Steinbeck.

One of the things I like most about Steinbeck is that you could boil down his style and themes to one word: 'America.' His work is quintessentially American. I mean, what is more American than heading west to California in search of a better life? And many of Steinbeck's characters are seeking the elusive American dream. But let's break up this overarching America notion into a few key parts. First, social protest is pervasive in Steinbeck's work. He often wrote about the downtrodden in society, particularly farmers and migrant workers, like the Joads. Related, Steinbeck's works are particularly attuned to the issues of humanity and the cruel ways we treat those who are different from us, whether because of class, foreignness or something else. One of my favorite lines from The Grapes of Wrath that conveys this idea is about the meaning of the term Okie: 'Okie use' ta mean you was from Oklahoma. Now it means you're a dirty son-of-a-bitch. Okie means you're scum. Don't mean nothing itself, it's the way they say it.' Here, a word that could have been a badge of pride for Oklahomans becomes a slur. Then there's realism.

I think of it like this: Steinbeck's characters and plots are true to life. Their situations and struggles are very grounded. Similarly, Steinbeck's prose is direct and straightforward. Though some novels are experiments in form, his language is usually very accessible. And Steinbeck's stance on the issues he presents is rarely ambiguous. There's also naturalism. Steinbeck loved America's landscapes and he portrayed them vividly. Long before I ever lived in Northern California, I felt I knew the farms, mountains, beaches and towns from their representations across his works. Finally, but no less important, are issues of family. The Grapes of Wrath isn't just the story of Tom Joad; it's the story of the Joad family, a multigenerational clan. In Steinbeck's works, families can be torn apart, or their familial bonds can form the characters' core. Other Major Works Let's do a quick tour through Steinbeck's other major works, focusing on their styles and themes and how they fit into his literary legacy. His earliest major work is 1935's Tortilla Flat.

This is a bit of a silly collection of stories about a group of Mexican-American guys and their meandering misadventures in Monterey County. They're good-natured souls; though they'd much rather drink than work. There is an underlying commentary on the social issues facing the Mexican-American community, which gives a little weight to the novel. In many ways, 1936's In Dubious Battle treads the same ground as The Grapes of Wrath. It's about striking fruit workers in California and their efforts to organize. While the American communists are fighting for the laborers, there is criticism of their motives. The oppressive capitalist system, though, is the true villain of this story. A major short novel is 1937's Of Mice and Men. Like The Grapes of Wrath, this is a tragic story of migrant workers in the Great Depression. There's a video on this one, and I encourage you to check it out. Another short novel is 1945's Cannery Row, which is set in Monterey. This is one of my favorites. I think of this one as like a TV show that's more about its characters than its plot.

And like a TV show, they have a series of little, largely insignificant adventures, but always pretty much end up back where they started. While it can be a light book, there's a looming sense of loneliness among its characters and sadness about their situations. In 1954, Steinbeck would write a sequel, Sweet Thursday, which is kind of like a reunion show where most of the fun is in revisiting favorite characters. But before that, there was 1947's The Wayward Bus. Though not as well known, this is another fascinating study of characters. Like Cannery Row, the characters are lost and lonely. × Lesson Plan: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck Lesson Plan by Mitchell Zuvela B. Sc., B. Ed. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck ✭✭✭✭✭ Aligned with Federal Curriculum Standards Make the elements of a novel come to life with comics! Including these awesome activities: Featured Layouts When students complete the activities in this lesson plan, they will use the following comic layout types. Character Map Your students will create amazing images like these in no time!

Main Characters The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck When you import any of the activities below, you can choose to share these ready-made characters with your students. Tom Joad Good-natured, thoughtful, exhibits moral certainty, protagonist. Ma Joad Mother of Tom, healer of the family’s ills, arbiter of arguments, pillar of the family. Pa Joad Father of Tom, good-hearted, plainspoken man, feels shame for being unemployed. Jim Casy Former preacher, moral voice, devoted friend of Tom, travels with the Joads. Rose of Sharon Oldest sister of Tom, impractical, petulant, and romantic young woman, personality transforms throughout the narrative. Grandpa Joad Old, bad tempered, foul-tongued, founder of the farm who torments his wife and later dies. Grandma Joad Pious Christian who forsakes her husband, later dies. Al Joad Cocky, competent, vain, younger brother of Tom, falls in love with Agnes. The Wilsons Couple that the Joads meet on their way to California. Connie Selfish, immature sister of Rose of Sharon, abandons the family. Noah Joad Tom’s slightly deformed older brother.

Ruthie Joad Fiery, competitive sister of Tom. Uncle John Tom’s uncle, tormented by the preventable death of his wife. Winfield Joad 20 Years Ago: Bruce Springsteen Unplugs Again on ‘The Ghost of Tom Joad’ 20 Years Ago: Bruce Springsteen Unplugs Again on ‘The Ghost of Tom Joad’ By Dave Lifton November 21, 2015 8:56 AM Subscribe to Ultimate Classic Rock on “The highway is alive tonight,” Bruce Springsteen sang on the opening title track to The Ghost of Tom Joad, which was released on Nov. 21, 1995. While the words echoed those found on several Springsteen anthems, the tone was far different. The fist-pumping rock n’ roll that had roused arenas and stadiums around the world for the past 20 years was now replaced by acoustic guitars, muted synthesizer washes, brushed drums and hushed vocals. But the changes were merely on the surface. The characters were facing the same internal dilemmas as those he’d written about for years, albeit in a markedly different location.

As the ‘80s ended, Springsteen and now-wife Patti Scialfa had left his beloved New Jersey for Los Angeles. Between the stories he’d been reading in the newspapers, Dale Maharidge’s book Journey to Nowhere: The Saga of the New Underclass and his own excursions out into the desert, he became interested in the lives of the Mexican migrant workers. He saw not only a parallel to the desperation felt by the characters in his own songs, but also to those who fled Dust Bowl in the ‘30s, as depicted in John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel, The Grapes of Wrath. The book centers around Tom Joad, a parolee who, like so many others at the time, travels with his family from Oklahoma to California in search of work upon losing their farm. Upon arriving after a difficult journey, Joad is horrified by the conditions in which the other displaced workers are forced to live. After killing the man who beats his friend to death, Joad resolves to fight injustice and help the downtrodden wherever he sees it. Springsteen’s title song depicts a preacher who has vowed to continue Joad’s work, and the rest of the album depicts the road ahead of him.

As he did on Nebraska , Springsteen tells the story of people who are living in the margins. “Straight Time” is about an ex-con struggling to adjust to life on the outside. The men in “Highway 29” and “The Line” are driven by lust to commit crimes. “Sinaloa Cowboys” chronicles a pair of Mexican brothers driven to making meth. While most of the stories take place in the Southwest, there are a few exceptions. “Galveston Bay” deals with a Vietnamese refugee fighting racism in Texas and “Youngstown” finds Springsteen in familiar territory, the economic hardships of the Rust Belt. But although Springsteen’s tales are as compelling as ever, the music doesn’t do them justice. His singing rarely rises above a whisper, nullifying their power as songs. Outside of “The Ghost of Tom Joad” and “Youngstown,” the only two that still regularly get performed with the E Street Band in full-bodied rock arrangements, there are no memorable melodies, and after a while they become somewhat interchangeable. Because of his desire to scale his sound back so drastically, there wasn’t a true single to work to radio, especially at a time when alternative and hip-hop dominated the airwaves.

It only reached No. 11 on the Billboard 200, his first record since The Wild, the Innocent and The E Street Shuffle to not crack the Top 10 and is one of his few studio albums to not go platinum. While its relative lack of commercial success looked like Springsteen’s career was in decline, by the end of the decade he would re-form the E Street Band and release a series of chart-topping albums and major world tours. With hindsight, The Ghost of Tom Joad comes across as a daring risk, one that paid off in some ways, but failed in others. Bruce Springsteen Albums, Ranked Worst to Best Image of The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck - Reading Guide - PenguinRandomHouse.com Questions and Topics for Discussion INTRODUCTION When John Steinbeck accepted his Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962, he described the writer’s obligation as “dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of improvement.” For some critics, that purpose has obscured Steinbeck’s literary value.

He has been characterized variously as an advocate of socialist-style solutions to the depredations of capitalism, a champion of individualism, a dabbler in sociobiology, and a naturalist. While evidence for different political and philosophical stances may be culled from Steinbeck’s writings, a reader who stops at this point misses some of the most interesting aspects of his work, including his use of paradox. “Men is supposed to think things out,” insists Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath. “It ought to have some meaning” (p. 55). But in this epic novel, as well as in Of Mice and Men and The Pearl, Steinbeck seems to question whether the mysteries of human existence can ever be fully explained. In these works that span the grim decade from 1937 to 1947, Steinbeck urges the dispossessed to challenge a system that denies them both sustenance and dignity, and to seek the spiritual belonging that enables individuals to achieve their full humanity. So we have the paradox of the author apparently denouncing injustice while also exalting acceptance of the sorrows visited on humanity, whether those sorrows are wrought by nature or by humans themselves.

All three books examine the morality and necessity of actions the characters choose as they pursue their dreams. The poor fisherman Kino in The Pearl dreams of education for his son and salvation for his people. We first meet him in the dimness before dawn, listening to the sounds of his wife, Juana, at her chores, which merge in his mind with the ancestral Song of the Family. “In this gulf of uncertain light [where] there were more illusions than realities” (p. 19), the pearl that Kino finds lights the way to a more just world and the end of centuries of mistreatment by white colonizers. But the promise of wealth manifests the archetypal evil hidden in the community’s unconscious, like the pearl that had lain hidden in its oyster at the bottom of the sea. As the dream turns dark, Kino descends into violence, bringing death to four men and ultimately to his own son. What other choices might he have made? This parable raises questions about our relationship to nature, the human need for spiritual connection, and the cost of resisting injustice. Steinbeck’s most controversial work, The Grapes of Wrath, raises similar questions.

During the Dust Bowl Era, three generations of the Joad family set out on the road, seeking a decent life in fertile California and joining thousands of others bound by an experience that transforms them from “I” to “we” (p. 152). Cooperation springs up among them spontaneously, in sharp contrast with the ruthlessness of big business and the sad choices made by its victims, for whom “a fella got to eat” (p. 344) is a continual refrain. Casy, the preacher turned strike leader, wonders about the “one big soul ever’body’s a part of” (p. 24). On their journey to the promised land, the characters in The Grapes of Wrath confront enigmatic natural forces and dehumanizing social institutions. Casy is martyred as he takes a stand for farmers who have lost their land to drought and are brutally exploited as migrant laborers. His disciple Tom Joad, who served time for killing a man in a bar fight, ultimately kills another man he believes responsible for Casy’s death. Tom’s passionate conviction—expressed in his assertion that “wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there” (p.

419)—stirs our sympathy; but his dilemma, like Kino’s, requires us to ask whether taking a human life can ever be justified. The Grapes of Wrath and The Pearl are also linked by their female characters and the questions they raise about gender roles and family identity. In The Pearl, Juana’s “quality of woman, the reason, the caution, the sense of preservation, could cut through Kino’s manness and save them all” (p. 59). Is this quality most responsible for the return of the pearl to the sea at the end of the novel? Like Juana, Ma Joad is “the citadel of the family” (p. 74). As the remnants of the Joad family seek refuge in a barn at the close of The Grapes of Wrath, Ma’s daughter Rose of Sharon nurses a starving stranger with milk meant for her dead baby. This final scene of female nurturing offers a resolution while also disturbing our long-held ideas about family. Steinbeck departs from this depiction of women in Of Mice and Men.

Confined to her husband’s home, and never given a name in the novel, Curley’s wife functions almost as a force of nature, precipitating the events that wreck the men’s “best laid schemes,” as poet Robert Burns wrote. Whereas the women in The Grapes of Wrath and The Pearl suggest hope even in the bleakest of circumstances, Curley’s wife leaves only shattered dreams in her wake. Of Mice and Men tells a tightly compressed story set during the Great Depression. George and Lennie, drifters and friends in a landscape of loners, scrape by with odd jobs while dreaming of the time they’ll “live on the fatta the lan'” (p. 101). Lennie has a massive body and limited intelligence, and his unpredictable behavior casts George as his protector. The novel is peopled with outcasts—a black man, a cripple, a lonely woman. The terror of the consequences of infirmity and old age in an unresponsive world is underscored when a laborer’s old dog is shot. Is Lennie’s similar death at the hands of his protector, with his dream before his eyes, preferable to what the future holds for him?

Nearly all the characters share in some version of the dream, recited almost ritualistically, and in their narrow world it is pitifully small: “All kin’s a vegetables in the garden, and if we want a little whisky we can sell a few eggs or something, or some milk. We’d jus’ live there. We’d belong there” (p. 54). The ending appears to be at odds with Steinbeck’s explicit exhortations for social change in the other two novels. In Of Mice and Men, he seems to appeal to a higher form of wisdom in the character of Slim, who does not aspire to anything beyond the sphere he occupies. His “understanding beyond thought” (p. 31) echoes Rose of Sharon’s mysterious smile at the end ofThe Grapes of Wrath. From the questions his characters pose about what it means to be fully human, Steinbeck may be understood to charge literature with serving not only as a call to action, but as an expression and acceptance of paradox in our world. “There is something untranslatable about a book,” he wrote.

“It is itself—one of the very few authentic magics our species has created.” ABOUT JOHN STEINBECK John Steinbeck’s groundbreaking and often controversial work, with its eye on the common people, earned him both high praise and sharp criticism. In addition to his novels, Steinbeck produced newspaper and travel articles, short stories, plays, and film scripts. Born in 1902 in Salinas, California, Steinbeck spent much of his life in surrounding Monterey county, the setting for some of his books. His experience as a young man working menial jobs, including as a farm laborer, ranch hand, and factory worker, was transformed into descriptions of the lives of his working-class characters. After attending Stanford University intermittently for six years, Steinbeck traveled by freighter to New York, where he worked briefly as a journalist before returning to California. His first novel, Cup of Gold, appeared in 1929, but it was Tortilla Flat (1935), his picaresque tale of Monterey’s paisanos, that first brought Steinbeck serious recognition. Of Mice and Men (1937) was also well received.

The Grapes of Wrath (1939), a book many claim is his masterpiece, was both critically acclaimed and denounced for its strong language and apparent leftist politics. Always shunning publicity, Steinbeck headed for Mexico in 1940, where he made The Forgotten Village, a documentary film about conditions in rural Mexico. He spent the war years as a correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, for which he later toured the Soviet Union in 1947; he also wrote the novel The Moon Is Down (1942), about Norwegian resistance to the Nazis. Steinbeck’s other notable works of fiction include The Pearl (1947), East of Eden (1952), and The Winter of Our Discontent(1961). He also wrote a memoir of a cross-country trip with his poodle, Travels with Charley in Search of America (1962). Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. He died in New York in 1968. His work stands as testament to his commitment to “celebrate man’s proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit.” Are we meant to conclude that Tom’s killing of the deputy is justified?

What makes Casy believe that “maybe all men got one big soul ever’body’s a part of” (p. 24)? Why does Steinbeck devote a chapter to the land turtle’s progress on the highway? Why does Pa yield his traditional position in the family to Ma? What does Ma mean when she says, “Bearin’ an’ dyin’ is two pieces of the same thing” (p. 210)? As Tom leaves the family, he says, “I’ll be ever’where—wherever you look” (p. 419). In what sense does he mean “everywhere”? Why does Steinbeck interrupt the Joads’ narrative with short chapters of commentary and description? Why does Rose of Sharon smile as she feeds the starving man with milk intended for her baby? What does Steinbeck mean when he writes, “In the souls of the people The Grapes of Wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage” (p. 349)? Why do different characters insist at different points in the book, “A fella got to eat” (p. 344, for example)? Why does the book start with drought and end with floods?

Is the family intact at the end of the novel? Why does Uncle John set the dead baby adrift rather than bury it? What is the source of Ma’s conviction that “we’re the people—we go on” (p. 280)? Does nature function as a force for either good or evil in this book? For Further Reflection As his land is destroyed, an anonymous tenant says, “We’ve got a bad thing made by men, and by God that’s something we can change” (p. 38). Is Steinbeck suggesting that a just social order is possible? When the narrator says “men ate what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread” (p. 36), the implication is that this break diminishes humanity. Can spirituality be maintained with increasing automation? Casy tells Tom about a prisoner whose view of history is that “ever’ time they’s a little step fo’ward, she may slip back a little, but she never slips clear back… they wasn’t no waste” (p. 384). Do you agree with this view?

The Grapes of Wrath John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer (1925) The alienating effects of capitalism, technology, and urbanization are portrayed in this montage of life in New York City. Tomás Rivera,… y no se lo trag— la tierra/… (And the Earth Did Not Devour Him) (1971) A seminal work of Latino literature, these thirteen vignettes embodying the anonymous voice of “the people” depict the exploitation of Mexican American migrant workers. Émile Zola, Germinal (1885) The striking miners in this nineteenth-century tale of class struggle are cast as the victims of both an unjust social system and their own human weaknesses. The Pearl Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea (1952) Winner of the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, this novella tells the story of an old fisherman’s endurance as he pursues, captures, and ultimately loses a great marlin. D. H.

Lawrence, “The Rocking-Horse Winner” (in The Woman Who Rode Away and Other Stories) (1928) This fablelike short story follows a boy to his tragic end as he desperately tries to respond to his family’s obsession with money. Of Mice and Men Frank Norris, McTeague (1899) In this pioneering naturalistic novel set in California, a man of large physical but small intellectual powers pursues a dream beyond menial tasks, but is corrupted by “civilization.” Leo Tolstoy, “Master and Man” (in Master and Man and Other Stories) (1895) The relationship between a greedy landowner and his gentle laborer undergoes a dramatic change in this novella when the two are trapped in a snowstorm The Pearl by John Steinbeck - Reading Guide - PenguinRandomHouse.com Questions and Topics for Discussion INTRODUCTION When John Steinbeck accepted his Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962, he described the writer’s obligation as “dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of improvement.” For some critics, that purpose has obscured Steinbeck’s literary value.

He has been characterized variously as an advocate of socialist-style solutions to the depredations of capitalism, a champion of individualism, a dabbler in sociobiology, and a naturalist. While evidence for different political and philosophical stances may be culled from Steinbeck’s writings, a reader who stops at this point misses some of the most interesting aspects of his work, including his use of paradox. “Men is supposed to think things out,” insists Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath. “It ought to have some meaning” (p. 55). But in this epic novel, as well as in Of Mice and Men and The Pearl, Steinbeck seems to question whether the mysteries of human existence can ever be fully explained. In these works that span the grim decade from 1937 to 1947, Steinbeck urges the dispossessed to challenge a system that denies them both sustenance and dignity, and to seek the spiritual belonging that enables individuals to achieve their full humanity. So we have the paradox of the author apparently denouncing injustice while also exalting acceptance of the sorrows visited on humanity, whether those sorrows are wrought by nature or by humans themselves.

All three books examine the morality and necessity of actions the characters choose as they pursue their dreams. The poor fisherman Kino in The Pearl dreams of education for his son and salvation for his people. We first meet him in the dimness before dawn, listening to the sounds of his wife, Juana, at her chores, which merge in his mind with the ancestral Song of the Family. “In this gulf of uncertain light [where] there were more illusions than realities” (p. 19), the pearl that Kino finds lights the way to a more just world and the end of centuries of mistreatment by white colonizers. But the promise of wealth manifests the archetypal evil hidden in the community’s unconscious, like the pearl that had lain hidden in its oyster at the bottom of the sea. As the dream turns dark, Kino descends into violence, bringing death to four men and ultimately to his own son. What other choices might he have made? This parable raises questions about our relationship to nature, the human need for spiritual connection, and the cost of resisting injustice. Steinbeck’s most controversial work, The Grapes of Wrath, raises similar questions.

During the Dust Bowl Era, three generations of the Joad family set out on the road, seeking a decent life in fertile California and joining thousands of others bound by an experience that transforms them from “I” to “we” (p. 152). Cooperation springs up among them spontaneously, in sharp contrast with the ruthlessness of big business and the sad choices made by its victims, for whom “a fella got to eat” (p. 344) is a continual refrain. Casy, the preacher turned strike leader, wonders about the “one big soul ever’body’s a part of” (p. 24). On their journey to the promised land, the characters in The Grapes of Wrath confront enigmatic natural forces and dehumanizing social institutions. Casy is martyred as he takes a stand for farmers who have lost their land to drought and are brutally exploited as migrant laborers. His disciple Tom Joad, who served time for killing a man in a bar fight, ultimately kills another man he believes responsible for Casy’s death. Tom’s passionate conviction—expressed in his assertion that “wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there” (p.

419)—stirs our sympathy; but his dilemma, like Kino’s, requires us to ask whether taking a human life can ever be justified. The Grapes of Wrath and The Pearl are also linked by their female characters and the questions they raise about gender roles and family identity. In The Pearl, Juana’s “quality of woman, the reason, the caution, the sense of preservation, could cut through Kino’s manness and save them all” (p. 59). Is this quality most responsible for the return of the pearl to the sea at the end of the novel? Like Juana, Ma Joad is “the citadel of the family” (p. 74). As the remnants of the Joad family seek refuge in a barn at the close of The Grapes of Wrath, Ma’s daughter Rose of Sharon nurses a starving stranger with milk meant for her dead baby. This final scene of female nurturing offers a resolution while also disturbing our long-held ideas about family. Steinbeck departs from this depiction of women in Of Mice and Men.

Confined to her husband’s home, and never given a name in the novel, Curley’s wife functions almost as a force of nature, precipitating the events that wreck the men’s “best laid schemes,” as poet Robert Burns wrote. Whereas the women in The Grapes of Wrath and The Pearl suggest hope even in the bleakest of circumstances, Curley’s wife leaves only shattered dreams in her wake. Of Mice and Men tells a tightly compressed story set during the Great Depression. George and Lennie, drifters and friends in a landscape of loners, scrape by with odd jobs while dreaming of the time they’ll “live on the fatta the lan'” (p. 101). Lennie has a massive body and limited intelligence, and his unpredictable behavior casts George as his protector. The novel is peopled with outcasts—a black man, a cripple, a lonely woman. The terror of the consequences of infirmity and old age in an unresponsive world is underscored when a laborer’s old dog is shot. Is Lennie’s similar death at the hands of his protector, with his dream before his eyes, preferable to what the future holds for him?

Nearly all the characters share in some version of the dream, recited almost ritualistically, and in their narrow world it is pitifully small: “All kin’s a vegetables in the garden, and if we want a little whisky we can sell a few eggs or something, or some milk. We’d jus’ live there. We’d belong there” (p. 54). The ending appears to be at odds with Steinbeck’s explicit exhortations for social change in the other two novels. In Of Mice and Men, he seems to appeal to a higher form of wisdom in the character of Slim, who does not aspire to anything beyond the sphere he occupies. His “understanding beyond thought” (p. 31) echoes Rose of Sharon’s mysterious smile at the end ofThe Grapes of Wrath. From the questions his characters pose about what it means to be fully human, Steinbeck may be understood to charge literature with serving not only as a call to action, but as an expression and acceptance of paradox in our world. “There is something untranslatable about a book,” he wrote.

“It is itself—one of the very few authentic magics our species has created.” ABOUT JOHN STEINBECK John Steinbeck’s groundbreaking and often controversial work, with its eye on the common people, earned him both high praise and sharp criticism. In addition to his novels, Steinbeck produced newspaper and travel articles, short stories, plays, and film scripts. Born in 1902 in Salinas, California, Steinbeck spent much of his life in surrounding Monterey county, the setting for some of his books. His experience as a young man working menial jobs, including as a farm laborer, ranch hand, and factory worker, was transformed into descriptions of the lives of his working-class characters. After attending Stanford University intermittently for six years, Steinbeck traveled by freighter to New York, where he worked briefly as a journalist before returning to California. His first novel, Cup of Gold, appeared in 1929, but it was Tortilla Flat (1935), his picaresque tale of Monterey’s paisanos, that first brought Steinbeck serious recognition. Of Mice and Men (1937) was also well received.

The Grapes of Wrath (1939), a book many claim is his masterpiece, was both critically acclaimed and denounced for its strong language and apparent leftist politics. Always shunning publicity, Steinbeck headed for Mexico in 1940, where he made The Forgotten Village, a documentary film about conditions in rural Mexico. He spent the war years as a correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, for which he later toured the Soviet Union in 1947; he also wrote the novel The Moon Is Down (1942), about Norwegian resistance to the Nazis. Steinbeck’s other notable works of fiction include The Pearl (1947), East of Eden (1952), and The Winter of Our Discontent(1961). He also wrote a memoir of a cross-country trip with his poodle, Travels with Charley in Search of America (1962). Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. He died in New York in 1968.

His work stands as testament to his commitment to “celebrate man’s proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit.” DISCUSSION QUESTIONS Why can neither Kino nor Juana protect their baby from the scorpion? Why could Kino kill the doctor more easily than talk to him? Why is it important to Juana that Kino be the one to throw the pearl back into the sea? Why does Kino think the killing of a man is not as evil as the killing of a boat? What does the narrator mean when he says, “A town is a thing like a colonial animal” (p. 21)? Why does the music of the pearl change? Why does Kino come to feel that he will lose his soul if he gives up the pearl? Why does Tomás help Kino? Why does Juana feel the events following the pearl’s discovery may all have been an illusion? What is the significance of Juana and Kino’s walking side by side when they return to the town? FOR FURTHER REFLECTION Did Kino do the right thing in demanding a fair price for the pearl, even if it meant leaving his community? Why does Steinbeck choose the parable as the form for this story?

RELATED TITLES The Grapes of Wrath John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer (1925) The alienating effects of capitalism, technology, and urbanization are portrayed in this montage of life in New York City. Tomás Rivera,… y no se lo trag— la tierra/… (And the Earth Did Not Devour Him) (1971) A seminal work of Latino literature, these thirteen vignettes embodying the anonymous voice of “the people” depict the exploitation of Mexican American migrant workers. Émile Zola, Germinal (1885) The striking miners in this nineteenth-century tale of class struggle are cast as the victims of both an unjust social system and their own human weaknesses. The Pearl Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea (1952) Winner of the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, this novella tells the story of an old fisherman’s endurance as he pursues, captures, and ultimately loses a great marlin. D. H.

Lawrence, “The Rocking-Horse Winner” (in The Woman Who Rode Away and Other Stories) (1928) This fablelike short story follows a boy to his tragic end as he desperately tries to respond to his family’s obsession with money. Of Mice and Men Frank Norris, McTeague (1899) In this pioneering naturalistic novel set in California, a man of large physical but small intellectual powers pursues a dream beyond menial tasks, but is corrupted by “civilization.” Leo Tolstoy, “Master and Man” (in Master and Man and Other Stories) (1895) The relationship between a greedy landowner and his gentle laborer undergoes a dramatic change in this novella when the two are trapped in a snowstorm.

Question: What famous John Steinbeck novel featured the travels of Tom Joad?
Answer: The Grapes of Wrath