Synopsis

This novel shows the hardship of the Okies (the name for people who came from Oklahoma), especialy the Joads who migrated to California in the hope of gaining a better standard of life. The story depicts this long and hard journey of the Joads from Oklahoma to the Colorado River and finally arrive in California. The Joads consist of three generations. They are Grandpa and Grandma as the grandparents , Pa Joad and Ma as the parents, Tom, Noah, Al, Rose of Sharon, Ruthie, and Winfield as the children. The five most representative characters in the Joads are Grandpa, Pa, Ma, Tom, and Noah. All over the southern Midwest states, farmers are no longer able to make a living because of the terrible weather and the machine has taken their place in farming so that they are forced to sell their farms. Thousands of families take to the roads leading to the promised land, California. Oklahoma is the first setting in the story in which the Joads suffer from the harsh drought. The increasing paleness of the sky and earth suggests the land’s loss of fertility. Besides, the bank wants to posses the land on which the Joads live by driving them away. The bank actually forces the Joads to leave Oklahoma. Grandpa, uprooted by force from the land he loves, becomes broken-hearted and dies just after they leave Oklahoma. The second place for the Joads is the Colorado River, the only river that the Joads meet before entering the desert near California. The Arizona white rock mountains surround this river. Noah decides to stay near the river since it is a nice place and it provides fish to eat. Although Pa and Ma become sad from Noah’s departure, they continue the journey to reach California for the family’s sake and future.

After crossing the Colorado River and the desert, finally the Joads arrive at California. Arriving in California, small business people along the way treat the migrants as enemies. And, to add the misery, returning migrants tell the Joads that there is no work to be had in California, that the conditions are even worse than those in Oklahoma. But the dream of a bountiful West Coast urges the Joads to move forward. In California the Joads stay in 3 places. The first place is Hooverville. They are disappointed to see that the condition in Hooverville is different from the dreams that the Joads have hoped of when they reach California. Since they are very disappointed with the situation and condition of Hooverville, they decide to go to Weedpatch Camp. It has sanitary facilities, and simple organized entertainment. For the first time since they arrive in California, the Joads find themselves treated as human beings. But the Joads cannot find jobs there,so they eventually decide to go down to Hooper Ranch, where there are lots of peach and cotton fields. However, the work there pays very low wages. Besides, there are agitators who attempt to keep the migrants from taking the work because of the unfair wages offered. But the Joads, only thinking about food, work in the farm, picking peaches for five cents a box and earn in a day just enough money to buy food for one meal. Still, in this place, though they find jobs as peach and cotton pickers and get money, they cannot feed themselves properly and earn savings for their future. The autumn rains began. Soon, the stream which runs beside the camp overflows and water enters the boxcars. When the rising water makes their position no longer bearable, the family moves from the camp on foot. They still live and suffer from the same bad condition as they have experienced in Oklahoma, and even worse. They have no jobs, money, nor food to eat. They are now waiting and figuring what kind of life they would have after the rain ends.

Taken from : Magill, F.N. (ed) 15th Volume Combined Edition. vol.5 (1964). Masterplots . New York : Salem Press.

Biography of John Steinbeck

John Ernest Steinbeck, an American novelist, was born on February 27, 1902 in Salinas, California. The time and place of his birth are important, because Steinbeck matured as an artist in his early thirties during the darkest days of the Depression. And his most important fictions are set in his beloved Valley. In one sense, Steinbeck’s location in time and place may have made him a particular American artist. Steinbeck grew up with a frustrated modern America and witnessed the most notable failure of the American dream in the Depression. After graduation from Salinas High School in 1919, Steinbeck entered Stanford University to study Marine Biology. However, he had several academic difficulties and then dropped out. Then he worked on ranches in the Salinas Valley and observed “real life”. His interest were varied, but finally he settled on novel-writing as his ambition in order to gain his career. Leaving Stanford without a degree in 1925, Steinbeck stayed in New Yok for several months, where he worked as a laborer, a newspaper reporter, and a free-lance writer. His first novel, Cup of Gold, a romance concerned with the Caribbean pirate Henry Morgan, was published by a small press directly before the crash of 1929, and it earned the young writer recognition but less money. In 1930, he married Carol Henning and moved with her to Los Angeles. One of his friends, Edward F.Ricketts, a marine biologist trained at the Universiy of Chicago, encouraged Steinbeck to change his earlier commitment on satire, allegory, and romanticism and turned to modern accounts of the Salinas Valley. Steinbeck’s next two novels, Pastures of Heaven (1932) and To a God Unknown (1933), were both set in the Valley, but both still were marked by excessive sentimentality and symbolism. Both were virtually ignored by the public and the critics. Later, Tortilla Flat established Steinbeck as a popular and critical success in 1935. Unfortunately, his parents died just before he achieved his first real success. Then, the novel’s sales provided him with enough money to pay his debts, to travel to Mexico, and to continue writing seriously. His next novel, In Dubious Battle (1936), established him as a serious literay artist and began the period of his greatest success. His short novels, The Red Pony and Of Mice and Men followed in 1937; his story collection, The Long Valley in 1938; and his epic of the Okies migration to California, The Grapes of Wrath in 1939. His own play version Of Mice and Men won the Drama Critics Circle Award in 1938, and The Grapes of Wrath received the Pulitzer Prize in 1940. Steinbeck had become one of the most popular and respectable writers in the country. In 1941, Pearl Harbor changed the direction of American culture and of Steinbeck’s literary development. During the war years, he seemed trying to adjust to his phenomenal success while absorting cataclysmic events (a sudden violent change in 1939-1945) around him. Thus Steinbeck’s career stalled for some reasons. He left the California subjects and realistic style of his novels, and he was unable to come to terms with a world at war, though he served for a few months as a front-line correspondent. Steinbeck was forty-three when World War II ended in 1945. He died in 1968 at the age of sixty-six. Over those twenty-three years, Steinbeck was extremely productive, winning considerable acclaim, the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962. Yet, the most important part of his carrer was finished. The war had changed the direction of his artistic development, and Steinbeck seemed powerless to reverse his decline. He died in New York City on December 20, 1968.

Taken from : Magill, F. N. (ed) (1983). Critical Survey of Long Fiction. New York :Salem Press.