“Everybody wants a little piece of lan’. I read plenty of books out here. Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. It’s just in their head. They’re all the time talkin’ about it, but its jus’ in their head.” (Steinbeck) The Grapes of Wrath is most often categorized as an American Realist novel. It was written by John Steinbeck and published in 1939. As a result of this novel, Steinbeck won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and prominently cited the novel when he won the Nobel Prize a little over twenty years after the text’s publication. This text follows the Joad family through the Great Depression. It begins in Oklahoma, watching as the family is driven from their home by drought and economic changes. Within the introduction of the novel the living conditions is described, “Every moving thing lifted the dust into the air: The 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.” (Grapes, 1) This novel is and will remain one of the most significant novels of the Great Depression. Despite its controversial nature it is timeless. In fact, the ending of this text is one of the most controversial pieces of literature written during the time period, and has never accurately made its way into film. The ending to John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath is the most significant portion of the novel due to its historical accuracy as well as its message about the American spirit.
The ending of The Grapes of Wrath maintains its historical accuracy by enforcing the idea of the women being the force that holds the family together. From even the beginning of this text we can see that Ma Joad is an incredibly strong ch…
… states, “. . .and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.” (Grapes, 385) This is a shockingly accurate summary of everything this timeless novel was written to represent, and will forever continue to represent.
Hugo, Victor. Les Miserables: Cosette. Charlottesville: U of Virginia Library, 1996. Print.
Kennedy, John F. Profiles in Courage. New York: HarperPerennial, 2000. Print.
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano. Address. White House Conference on Children in a Democracy. Washington, D.C. 19 Jan. 1940. Radio.
Steinbeck, John. Of Mice and Men. John Steinbeck centennial ed. New York: Penguin, 2002. Print.
Wyatt, David. New Essays on the Grapes of Wrath. New York: Cambridge UP, 1990. Print.