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.

Then we get to another major work, 1952's East of Eden. Remember when I said Monterey County was a little like Eden? Steinbeck certainly thought so, too. He sought to write an epic about family history in the Salinas Valley, and that he did. This novel is principally about those two things: family and the Salinas Valley. It's also pretty heavy-handed with its Biblical imagery. For example, there are numerous characters whose names begin with a 'c' or 'a,' and they all contain allusions to the Cain and Abel story from Genesis.

In 1961, Steinbeck published his final novel, The Winter of Our Discontent. This is a dark tale about a family that loses its wealth, then struggles with moral degradation. It's a harsh commentary on American culture in the prosperous times following World War II.

So, that's Steinbeck's final novel. But there's one more very important work to discuss: 1962's Travels with Charley: In Search of America. In 1960, Steinbeck converted a pick-up truck into a camper and set out to see America. His companion? Charley, his dog. The resulting non-fiction book is a fascinating account of the nation Steinbeck had been describing for decades, seen through the new lens of the 1960s.

Of course, 1960 was a particularly interesting time to see America. The Kennedy-Nixon election season was in full swing. A new technological age was dawning (and, in Steinbeck's view, was posing a serious threat to American culture - if only he'd been around for so-called smartphones...). And, in one of the book's most gripping passages, there is a major conflict throughout the Deep South over school integration. Steinbeck recounts with horror the disgusting racism of white mothers vehemently protesting their schools accepting black children.

Steinbeck died in 1968 and it's rumored that he knew the end was near, so he really just wanted to see the nation he so loved one final time.

Lesson Summary

In summary, John Steinbeck is a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, known for works including Of Mice and Men, East of Eden and Travels with Charley. One of his most famous novels, The Grapes of Wrath, follows the Joad family as they travel from Oklahoma to California during the Great Depression, in search of farm work.

Steinbeck often wrote about migrant farmers, labor struggles and similar stories of the poor and downtrodden. He also wrote with stark realism and a deep appreciation of the natural world. A recurring setting for his works is Monterey County in Northern California, where he grew up and which he considered a kind of paradise.

 

This lesson is an analysis of the origin and meaning of the title of John Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath'. It explains how this phrase applies literally and figuratively to the plot of the novel.

The Grapes of Wrath

John Steinbeck published this famous novel in 1939, and it's still widely read for pleasure and in high school English classrooms across the country. The novel is about a family that moves from Oklahoma, which was ''The Dustbowl'' area of the United States that was suffering from drought and the Great Depression, to California in search of work. Steinbeck had a harder time choosing a title for the book than he did writing it; his wife helped him think of the phrase ''the grapes of wrath,'' which comes from a couple different sources.

Origins of the Title

The phrase ''grapes of wrath'' is a biblical allusion, or reference, to the Book of Revelation, passage 14:19-20, which reads, ''So the angel swung his sickle to the earth and gathered the clusters from the vine of the earth, and threw them into the great wine press of the wrath of God.''

In this passage, the wrath of God is his anger and punishment over the evil that is in the world; this line is a metaphor, or comparison, using grapes and the wine press where the angel is helping God transform the grapes (evil on Earth) into God's wrath, punishment, and justice (wine). Here, wine symbolizes the blood that will come from his wrath. Essentially, the quote is about God bestowing vengeance and justice upon the people who are evil on Earth and deserve punishment.

There is a second source that the title is a reference to, and this one is the famous song ''The Battle Hymn of the Republic''. Because the song was written in the context of American history and politics, it connects to The Grapes of Wrath more clearly because it's also a text that is grounded in a specific time and place in American history. Julia Howe wrote ''The Battle Hymn of the Republic'' in 1861. The opening stanza references the biblical passage, but this time it uses the actual phrase ''the grapes of wrath,'' which gives it a more obvious connection to the novel's title. It reads:

''Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword;
His truth is marching on.''

Writing in 1861, Howe uses the reference to imply what it does in the Bible: predicting the end of evil and coming of justice. As a person writing in the 1860s in America, the evil about which she writes is clearly the violence surrounding the Civil War. It was actually the song, and not the Bible passage, that Steinbeck's wife, Carol Henning, was thinking of when she suggested the title to Steinbeck.

Meaning and Analysis

Author John Steinbeck pulled from several sources to create the title of this novel

John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath illustrates the hardship of the Joad family as they're forced to move from Oklahoma to California in search of farming jobs because of the drought and depression. Grapes are a common crop in California and are probably what many of the poor farmers like the Joads picked during this time period. The phrase ''grapes of wrath'' works on several levels because they are also literally picking grapes and experiencing hardship.

Families like the Joads worked as grape pickers in California during the Depression

Given the two sources described have already used the metaphor of grapes and wine as a symbol of God's punishment of evil, using this phrase as the title for Steinbeck's novel seems to suggest something similar; it's a prediction that, sooner or later, the people who suffered through the Great Depression, and specifically people like the Joad family, will get justice for their suffering, and the evil people - those who exploit workers and greedy farmer owners - will get the punishment they deserve.

Lesson Summary

Let's review. There are two chief source materials for the title of John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath. The title is an allusion, or reference to another work, to both the Bible and a song. The metaphor of grapes representing God's wrath first appeared in the Book of Revelation in the Bible and later in ''The Battle Hymn of the Republic'', written in America about the Civil War. Both uses emphasize that God will deliver justice, whether it's rewards for the suffering or punishment for the evil. In the context of The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck is probably implying the same attitude about the suffering of families during the Great Depression. Because the novel also involves farming in California, grapes also have a literal and relevant meaning as a common crop in that area.

 

In this lesson, you will learn about John Steinbeck's ability to immerse the reader into his world of 'The Grapes of Wrath' by showing the suffering of the land and the humanity of the Joads.

The World of The Grapes of Wrath

Think about your own home--what endears it to you and makes you never want to leave it behind. Now imagine the sun burning the land and wind kicking up dust clouds so severe that they creep their way into every part of your home, making it impossible to survive. This is the world we enter in The Grapes of Wrath, a novel with the incredible power to create an entirely new world. When we read this novel by John Steinbeck, we put our own world on pause, so to speak, and get lost in Steinbeck's.

Born in America at the turn of the century, Steinbeck often drew the worlds of his stories from real-life historical events. He was a master novelist who knew how to make his created worlds come alive. His attention to detail and carefully descriptive scenes in The Grapes of Wrath immerse his reader into the Dust Bowl, a time of severe drought which caused dust storms across the Great Plains. Also happening during this time was the Great Depression, a ten-year period (1929-1939) of economic downturn in the United States. The Grapes of Wrath follows the Joads, a family of Oklahoma farmers as they grapple with the fallout of these two catastrophes. By leaning into Steinbeck's scenes and descriptions, we come to more fully understand the farmers' humanity.

Visualizing the Dying Land

Dying Land of the Dust Bowl

The Grapes of Wrath opens with a scene of Oklahoma land growing green under the gentle rains of the spring, only to become scorched and starving by the end of May, with the summer months still to come:

Then it was June, and the sun shone more fiercely. The brown lines on the corn leaves widened and moved in on the central ribs. The weeds frayed and edged back toward their roots. The air was thin and the sky more pale; and every day the earth paled… Every moving thing lifted the dust into the air: a walking man lifted a thin layer as high as his waist, and a wagon lifted the dust as high as the fence tops, and an automobile boiled a cloud behind it. The dust was long in settling back again. (1-2)

This opening description of the Dust Bowl does more than simply tell us that a drought hovered over Oklahoma, killing the crops and turning the land to dust, but shows us how the drought slowly destroys the land. By showing us how the Dust Bowl crept upon the land and its inhabitants, rather than simply telling us, Steinbeck offers his reader a visceral experience.

Leaving Home

A Home Left Behind in the Dust Bowl

After the Joads lose their land, as they are unable to grow the crops that paid for it, they pack their things and set out to California to find work. This seems fairly reasonable considering that drought has made it impossible to farm in Oklahoma. The harsh living conditions of a Dust Bowl-stricken Oklahoma prairie make the promise of a lush and welcoming California seem ideal. And yet, despite the rationale for loading up their truck and leaving, it is painful to leave one's home, especially under such trying circumstances as the Joads found themselves in:

Ma tried to look, but the body of the load cut off her view. She straightened her head and peered straight ahead along the dirt road. And a great weariness was in her eyes. The people on top of the load did look back. They saw the house and the barn and a little smoke still rising from the chimney. They saw windows reddening under the first color of the sun. And then the hill cut them off. The cotton fields lined the road. And the truck crawled slowly through the dust toward the highway west. (114)

In the above passage, Steinbeck creates a scene of leaving, signaling the sadness the Joads feel when they look back upon their home as they depart it. What they see is not the dust and the dying land, but their home, coming to life under the light of the sun rise. This somber and painful moment once again brings the character's world alive to the reader. When the Joads suffer, we can't help but feel the sting of that suffering, too.

Lesson Summary

Novels have the ability to open up new worlds for their readers, sometimes so effectively that it's as if the reader's world is put on pause while they're immersed in another. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck does just that, drawing the reader into the world of 1930's America. At this time, Midwestern farmers were stricken by the Dust Bowl: droughts which decimated the farms many of them relied on. Many farmers headed west in search of work, only to find that California had been decimated by the Great Depression. The Grapes of Wrath follows the Joads, a family of farmers grappling with these events in the 1930s. By creating vivid depictions of scenes and settings in the novel, Steinbeck reveals the humanity of his characters. We aren't just told what is happening to them, but we are shown what they see; and on some level, we are made to feel what they feel.

 

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck is a gritty, realistic look at life in the Dust Bowl in America during the Great Depression. This lesson will focus on the summary, characters, and themes of The Grapes of Wrath.

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath was written in 1939 and portrays life in the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression. This novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and remains a classic of American literature.

John Steinbeck

Plot of The Grapes of Wrath

Tom Joad has been incarcerated for the past four years for murder. On parole, he heads home to Sallisaw, Oklahoma. Before he get there, he meets Jim Casy, who used to be a preacher. Casy accompanies Tom to his home, which is abandoned.

At the empty house, an old friend, Muley Graves, stops by. Muley tells them that tenant farmers have been evicted, the drought has ruined the farms, and dust storms are driving people away from Oklahoma. Many people have left for California, including Muley's family. The Joads are still in town, staying at Uncle John Joad's house.

The next day, Tom and Casy go to Uncle John's house. Tom is received with joy by his mother, Ma Joad, his father Pa Joad, Grampa, Granma, his brothers Noah, Al, and Winfield, his sisters Rose of Sharon and Ruthie, and Rose of Sharon's husband, Connie Rivers. The Joads are preparing to move to California. Grampa refuses to leave, but they drug him with cough medicine and put him into their old car.

The journey is unpleasant. The Joads meet Ivy and Sairy Wilson, a couple who are also heading west. The Wilsons let the ill Grampa take a nap in their tent, where he dies of a stroke. The men bury him, and the two families decide to caravan to California.

But the Wilsons' car dies. The families camp while Tom and Al work on the car. A man at the campsite claims there are no jobs in California. Worried, the Joads and the Wilsons press on.

When they cross Arizona and drive into California, they meet people who tell them that there are no jobs in California and the residents there hate the migrants. Noah tells them he's not going any further and leaves.

Ma is worried about Granma, who is very ill. Sairy is also very ill, and Ivy tells the Joads to go on without them. They do, but Granma dies in the car. The Joads drive to Bakersfield. The Joads then go to a campsite called Hooverville. There, they meet Floyd Knowles, who warns them that jobs are very scarce and the whole system is corrupt.

A brawl breaks out between Floyd and a contractor and quickly involves the police. In the chaos, Casy kicks a policeman until he is unconscious. Casy is arrested. When the chaos settles, Connie has abandoned the family, and Rose of Sharon, who is pregnant, is inconsolable.

The family goes south to Weedpatch, where there is a job picking peaches. Here, Tom meets back up with Casy, who has been picketing to protest the low wages. Soon, Casy and Tom are caught by authorities. Casy is killed when someone hits him in the head with a pick-axe. Tom is badly beaten, but he pulls the pickaxe from Casy's head and kills the man who killed Casy.

Now Tom is a wanted man, so the family leaves. They decide to camp in an abandoned boxcar while they work picking cotton. In an altercation with a bully, Ruthie shouts out that her brother has killed two men. Tom says a tearful farewell to his family and leaves.

That winter, a flood starts just as Rose of Sharon goes into labor. The baby is born dead while the water rises. The Joads leave the boxcar, though Al decides to remain with his new fiancée. They find an abandoned barn. Inside are a man and a little boy. The father is near death from starvation, as he's been giving all his food to his son. Rose of Sharon lets him drink her breastmilk, saving his life.

Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl

Characters in The Grapes of Wrath

Tom Joad is a tough guy who often reverts to his fists, or whatever tool is handy, in a fight. But he's also a great big brother, full of advice, and kind to strangers. He doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the Joad family.

Ma Joad is the heart and soul of the Joad family. Like her son Tom, she's tough but intuitive. She doubts the wisdom of the California trip long before the others do. She holds the family together.

Pa Joad seems to get quieter and weaker as the novel goes on. Unlike Ma, he is unable to cope with the drastic changes his family goes through.

Reverend Jim Casy is a spiritual leader for the Joad family, though no longer a preacher. He is also a martyr, as he is killed for his beliefs in a fair migrant farming system.

Rose of Sharon undergoes a huge change in this novel, from a selfish, spoiled girl to a woman who selflessly uses her breast milk to save a man's life.

Themes of The Grapes of Wrath

There are three main themes in this novel: change, family, and betrayal.

Change is evident right from the beginning, when Tom Joad comes home to a world he does not recognize. Everything changes in this novel; the climate, the landscape, the location, and the members of the family itself.

Family is also vital to this story. The novel teaches us that with family by your side, you're unstoppable. You can overcome anything.

Finally, betrayal plays a big role in the story. The ultimate betrayal is that done by Connie Rivers, who leaves his pregnant wife behind to chase his own dreams.

Lesson Summary

The Grapes of Wrath is one of the most important novels of American Literature. It's been alluded to on popular television shows, sung about, and translated into nearly every language. Published more than seventy-five years ago, it still sells over 100,000 copies annually. Longevity makes The Grapes of Wrath so powerful. Though it portrays a time many would like to forget, it will remain an American classic.

 

In this lesson, we'll explore the various reasons why John Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath' (1939) was banned, challenged, and burned. We'll learn about the objections that parents, teachers, and businessmen raised against the novel.

Profanity, Sex, and Communism, Oh My!

When it was first published in 1939, John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath ruffled a lot of feathers. Conservatives read its collectivist message as a rejection of American individualism. They called Steinbeck a communist. Business owners and landowners railed against the novel's promotion of labor unionization, fearful of the effect it would have on the workers under their employ. Parents and teachers also derided the novel for its foul language, sexual content, and violence. For folks sensitive to the political, religious, and social implications of literature, there's a lot not to like about this novel. Let's look at some reasons John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath was banned, challenged, and burned across the country.

Banned, Challenged, Burned

The American Library Association (ALA) maintains a list of all the books that have ever been banned, or forcibly removed, from public library systems or school curricula. The ALA also keeps track of books that have been challenged, referring to the process in which community members, teachers, and parents raise formal objections to publicly available reading materials.

In some cases, books have also been burned for political, ideological, or religious reasons. Book burning is infrequent because of its association with extreme political regimes, principally Nazism, that restrict citizens' access to knowledge. American democracy upholds the right of every citizen to the freedom of expression and thought, as stated in the U.S. Bill of Rights. In any case, banning, challenging, and burning books is tantamount to censorship, the suppression of objectionable material. In fact, the criticism lodged against Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath was the main impetus that drove the ALA to implement their own Library Bill of Rights.

In his introduction to the Penguin edition, Robert DeMott writes that criticism of the novel revolves around ''alleged sentimentalism; stereotyped characterizations; heavy-handed symbolism; unconvincing dialogue; episodic, melodramatic plot; misplaced Oklahoma geography; and inaccurate rendering of historical facts…''

Specifically, objections raised against John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath cross the spectrum from foul language and communist implications to religious themes and sexuality. Since its publication in 1939, the novel has been banned in Kern County, California; St Louis, Illinois; Buffalo, New York; Kansas City, Missouri; Kanawha, IA; and Anniston, Alabama. It has been challenged in more places than that both nationally and internationally. The case even went before Congress, where Oklahoma representative Lyle Boren of Oklahoma denounced the novel as ''a lie, a black, infernal creation of a twisted, distorted mind.''

Destination: California!

Of all the places that The Grapes of Wrath caused disruption, it was Kern county, California, that felt the brunt of the pain. Local businessmen in particular felt attacked by Steinbeck's portrayal of working conditions in their county.

If you recall, the novel follows the Joad family's pilgrimage from Oklahoma to California in search of work. When they arrive in Kern County, California, they discover their situation not much improved. Migrants are forced into shanty towns; wages much lower than expected; poor working and living conditions. Well, residents and businessmen of Kern County took that to heart. They rejected Steinbeck's portrayal of the living and working situation in California as inaccurate and slanderous.

Upon the release of the novel in 1939, it was immediately banned by the county council. Politicians, businessmen, teachers, and parents all rejected Steinbeck's negative portrayal of California farmers. It was the local chapter of the Associated Farmers, a consortium of California businessmen and landowners, who championed the decision. Their leader, Bill Camp, even went so far as organizing a book burning. In what some called a 'symbolic act' and others called a 'photo-op', Camp and his colleague Clell Pruett set a copy of the book ablaze in a trash can.

In response, John Steinbeck wrote, ''The Associated Farmers have begun an hysterical personal attack on me both in the papers and a whispering campaign. I'm a Jew, a pervert, a drunk, a dope fiend.'' He concluded, rightly, that the bans and burnings resulted from ''people who admit they haven't read Grapes, indeed wouldn't dirty their minds with it.''

Lesson Summary

When it was first published in 1939, businessmen, farmers, teachers, and parents raised serious objections to John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. They protested the novel's foul language, religious themes, sexual overtones, and communist implications. Various school boards, library associations, and government councils across the country engaged in acts of censorship, either banning or challenging the book.

Steinbeck's choice to end the Joad's journey in Kern County, California, raised the feathers of local politicians and businessmen. The Associated Farmers of California, headed by Bill Camp, actually held a symbolic book burning. All in all, The Grapes of Wrath goes down in history as one of the most controversial and politically-minded books of the 20th century.

 

In this lesson, we will discover the reasons that critics both acclaimed and reviled Steinbeck's populist road journey. We'll learn why right-wing critics reacted negatively to the novel's sentimentality. Then, we'll explore the novel's critique of capitalism.

The Great American Novel?

How can a novel that exposes the strife of migrant farmers ruffle so many feathers? At first, the struggle of the Joad family to attain a healthy lifestyle seems like a noble pursuit. But, when juxtaposing Steinbeck's representation of migrant farmer rubs against the needs of landowners and politicians, it becomes clear how each side determines a political argument.

The Grapes of Wrath means a lot of different things to different people. As Robert Demott explains in his introduction to the 2006 edition, the novel is ''part naturalistic epic, part labor testament, part family chronicle, part partisan journalism, part environmental jeremiad, part captivity narrative, part road novel, part transcendental gospel.''

Steinbeck dramatizes the plight of migrant laborers fleeing the Dust Bowl

Critics hail The Grapes of Wrath on par with Faulkner and Hemingway, a classic worthy of the title of The Great American Novel. Playwright Arthur Miller wrote of Steinbeck, ''I can't think of another American writer, with the possible exception of Mark Twain, who so deeply penetrated the political life of the country.''

Left and Right

Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath ignited a heated debate against left-wing and right-wing critics. Leftists, or Democrats and Liberals, supported the novel's themes of labor unionization and government support for the poor. Right-wing critics, conservatives, and Republicans denounced Steinbeck's sentimentalized portrayal of migrant workers. Conservative readers interpreted Steinbeck's support of poor farmers as a call to action in a factor of Communism.

Some said the novel advocated for the much-needed plight of the common worker. Others disagreed, arguing that American agriculture had already been pushed to limits. The migration of workers from east to west merely aggravated a problem that was already outpaced by labor conditions.

Let's take a look at the economic and political ramifications of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.

Contemporary Response

In its day, The Grapes of Wrath was met with mixed reviews. Those sympathetic to Steinbeck's 'Oakies' hailed the novel as a brilliant portrayal of Dust Bowl Depression-era America. But industrialists and right-wing politicians declared The Grapes of Wrath a revolutionary call to arms. They feared the novel would cause unrest and drive even more of the unemployed poor out west.

In his 1939 New York Times review, Peter Munro Jack notes the similarity between Steinbeck's 'revolutionary' story and those of Hemingway, Caldwell, and Faulkner. Jack calls the novel 'superb' and also 'angry.' Jack writes diplomatically, ''It may be an exaggeration, but it is the exaggeration of an honest and splendid writer.'' This New York Times critic prophecies that ''Californians are not going to like this angry novel.'' And, he was right. The novel ruffled feathers among California farmers, politicians, parents, and librarians. They banned the novel in Kern County, burned a copy in a symbolic gesture and even petitioned Congress to have the novel formally removed.

The Grapes of Wrath also elicited a swath of negative reviews. Congressman Lyle Borden of Oklahoma called it ''a black, infernal creation of a twisted, distorted mind….Some have said this book exposes a condition and a character of people,…but the truth is this book exposes nothing but the total depravity, vulgarity, and degraded mentality of the author.''

Critics of Steinbeck's novel have never come to a conclusion as to the economic or political implications the author sets forth. In fact, the ramifications of Dust-Bowl America continue to impact society in the 21st century.