Grapes of Wrath Book Report

Facts about the author:

* John Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902 in Salinas, California. Salinas is known as the "salad bowl of the nation"

* Throughout his life, Steinbeck used Pigasus, a flying pig, to symbolize himself. Some of his reasons for doing so - "a lumbering soul but trying to fly" and "not enough wingspread but plenty of intention"

* Steinbeck won the Pulitzer Prize for The Grapes of Wrath in 1940. In 1962, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature

* Steinbeck was a war correspondent during World War II

* In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson presented John Steinbeck with a United States Medal of Freedom

* The Grapes of Wrath is considered to be Steinbeck's finest work. It was made into a movie with Henry Fonda playing Tom Joad

Genre:

Epic; realistic fiction

Setting:

The book starts off on the family's farm in Oklahoma and follows their path through America to California.

Theme:

Wrath

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The Joads stand as exemplary figures in their refusal to be broken by the circumstances that conspire against them. At every turn, Steinbeck seems intent on showing their dignity and honor; he emphasizes the importance of maintaining self-respect in order to survive spiritually. Nowhere is this more evident than at the end of the novel. The Joads have suffered incomparable losses: Noah, Connie and Tom have left the family; Rose of Sharon gives birth to a stillborn baby; the family possesses neither food nor promise of work. Yet it is at this moment (Chapter Thirty) that the family manages to rise above hardship to perform an act of unsurpassed kindness and generosity for the starving man, showing that the Joads have not lost their sense of the value of human life.

Criticism:

In the 1993 State level competition in History Day in California Elis Palols received the prestigious Heilbron Award given to the California Historical Society for this paper. In addition she was the CCHS second place winner in senior papers. At the time she was a junior at East Bakersfield High School.

When John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath was published in 1939, it caused an uproar in this nation. The inside cover of the novel states, "It electrified an America still convalescing ideas that many people were, at the least, uncomfortable with this electlicity caused the Kern County Board of Supervisors to ban the book in the county's public schools and libraries on August 22, 1939.

The Grapes of Wrath was mostly set in Kern County, California and illustrated the "corporate landowners"' cruelty towards the "exploited agricultural workers. These agricultural workers

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were usually derogatorily called "Okies," because most of them had migrated from Oklahoma. Others came from Arkansas, Kansas, and New Mexico. After the years of drought in the area that became known as the Dust Bowl and after they were thrown off their land, these farmers moved to California to start a new life, hoping to own their land. However, their luck was not as large as their hope and many were left homeless and unemployed.

According to Steinbeck's novel, this was because the California landowners barely paid the workers enough to live on. Apparently, this offended some of Kern County's citizens, especially the Associated Farmers of Kern County. They completely supported the Board of Supervisors' resolution that stated the novel "misrepresented conditions in the county and the whole San Joaquin Valley and blamed the local farmers for the plight of the indigent farmers. The group also solicited other organizations in the valley for support. W.B. Camp, a prominent rancher of the time and president of the Associated Farmers, said that his organization would "fight to remove the 'smear' on the good name of Kern, the state of California and agriculture.

Despite the denials of those who felt they were falsely portrayed by Steinbeck, there are those who were there that say it is true. When asked by Kathi Durham on March 9, 1981 if Steinbeck's portayal of the treatment of the farm workers was accurate. Eua1 Murmduke Stone said, "Oh, they treated them like dogs, they was treated like dogs. They only wanted them to get their crops picked." Stone could be considered an "Okie," since he moved from Oklahoma to California in 1929. Also, Mary DeArmond, a Bakersfield High and East Bakersfield High School teacher from 1938 to 1943, stated. "It (The Grapes of Wrath) was all true.

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Even though the Associated Falmers and the Board of Supervisors couldn't get the unfair and untrue rap to stick, they tried