The Grapes of Wrath

The character Rose of Sharon has the most obvious symbolism in The Grapes of Wrath. The name of Tom Joad's sister Rose of Sharon is a reference to the Song of Song in the Hebrew Bible, which...

John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath is full of literary devices. Before we get to some of them, let's make sure we know what a literary device is. Think about what a device is. A phone could be a...

In Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, the handbills are essentially flyers that encouraged poor folks looking for a better quality of life to travel to California to pick produce. In the novel, the...

Throughout The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck illustrates the importance of solidarity among citizens in contrast to competition, which is represented by the interests of big banks and wealthy...

In this famous excerpt from The Grapes of Wrath, we're presented with the unforgettable metaphor of banks and land-holding companies as monsters. They're not literally monsters, of course, insofar...

The title was suggested by Steinbeck's first wife after hearing the song, The Battle Hymn of the Republic. "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord/He is trampling out the...

Chapter 20 contains the scene where Jim Casy is taken to jail. The Joads and Casy are at the first squatter's camp they stay in when they finally arrive in California. At this camp, some men come...

The truck driver in Chapter 2 represents the way in which the poor help the poor. Tom Joad has been walking home when he comes upon the truck at a roadside diner. A sticker on the windshield reads...

The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, is a novel which follows the Joad family as they, along with so many others suffering the effects of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, are forced to...

Most of the narration is written in third person, but some chapters have anonymous characters narrate the Joads' journey to give an outside, objective point of view. On page 206 (Chapter 14) the...

I'm with #4 on the hope idea. Something is bad, but someone offers to help. A job is lost, but someone helps provide. Some are up to no good, but everyone rallies around to get rid of them. He...

The beginning of chapter nine is an extended metaphor about the pain of the farmers selling off their belongings to the junk man at horrendously low prices. It is mostly farming implements, an...

Casy's death represents several elements in the narrative. The first is that it shows the lengths that the "owners and their minions" will go to silence the truth from being spoken. Casy's death...

In Chapter 16 of The Grapes of Wrath, the Wilson's car breaks down again, and Tom suggests that he and Casy stay behind to fix it (it needs a bearing, which they will have to wait to buy on...

Social realism is defined as a medium that artists, authors, filmmakers, and photographers portray and depict the everyday lives of poor, working-class individuals. John Steinbeck's use of social...

This quote comes from a tenant farmer speaking to a man driving a bulldozing tractor through the countryside, destroying the homes of poor farmers who work the land. The man driving the tractor...

This excerpt employs a metaphor to describe the bank. A metaphor describes something by comparing it to something different that has similar characteristics. In this case, the bank is compared to a...

Chapter 14 of The Grapes of Wrath expresses in almost Biblical tones the overarching theme of this great novel: Men when unified have strength and dignity, for there is a spiritual neccessity to...

As you look for significant quotations from The Grapes of Wrath, think about the book's important themes and look for moments when the language of the novel expresses some aspect of those themes....

Route 66 is an actual road, the number was given to it by the government so Steinbeck had no symbolic meaning for it in the book. Route 66 has an interesting and colorful history because it was...

John Steinbeck’s novel traces the struggles of the extended Joad family from Oklahoma on their way to California in the 1930s. The Joads lost their land to the Dust Bowl, and, like many other...

Wheatpatch Camp, called Weedpatch Camp in the book, is much nicer than the other camps the Joads have seen. It is a government camp, and it is well run; Weedpatch is a place where Ma Joad knows...

One good example of vivid imagery in The Grapes of Wrath is found on the first page of Chapter 17, and again on the last page of the chapter. In the daylight [the migrant people] scuttled like...

Steinbeck spends a good deal of time describing the turtle crossing the road in chapter three. The turtle symbolizes the Joads and all the other sharecroppers displaced by the Dust Bowl who have to...

In creating the setting of a once rich, fertile earth now deprived of life-giving nourishment, John Steinbeck introduces the first of the harships of the Joads, Oklahoma farmers who become the...

These chapters depict figure without names, for the most part, helping to demonstrate the idea that what is happening to the Joad family is happening to many other Americans. The plight of the...

In Steinbeck's wonderful novel The Grapes of Wrath, the author frequently uses animals as symbols for the state of well-being of the family members; there are many examples of this throughout the...

In Chapter Sixteen of The Grapes of Wrath, there are several literary devices at work: Figurative language Steinbeck describes the Joad and Wilson families as in flight across the Panhandle, a...

The condition of nature in the opening chapter is reflective of a progression where it is increasingly difficult to find mercy from the harsh elements. The land reflects this state of war- like...

In The Grapes of Wrath, we see prejudice against the migrant workers who travel to California for a better life, like the Joad family. They are seen as outsiders and paid little for their work...

With syntax meaning the systematic, grammatical arrangement of words in a sentence, Chapter 21 of The Grapes of Wrath. an intercalary chapter, demonstrates the biblical refrain that Steinbeck has...

This is a great question! In my opinion, chapters 1, 29, and 9 are the most significant. Chapter 1 presents the setting: at first,the reader sees the rain leaving the landscape, the weeds and...

As Tom Joad and Casy the preacher make their way to Uncle John's place, they pass some dogs along the way. There's a female dog in season and a group of male dogs hanging around her. This adds a...

In chapter 9, one of the interchapters, the narration asks: " How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past? No. Leave it. Burn it." Then in the next...

Much like the newsreel style of John Dos Passos in U.S.A. Trilogy, Steinbeck's intercalary Chapter 7 portrays rhetorically the cold exploitation of the used car salesmen who sell vehicles to the...

The theme of the turtle vignette is endurance. The turtle serves as an allegory of the experience of the Joads and others like them. It is moving along the same road as the rest of the displaced...

The above quote, taken from John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath, uses two different kinds of figures of speech. A phrase at the end of the quotation, "the wheel screamed" is an example of...

The previous post was well directed. I would say that Steinbeck’s work is relevant to the modern setting because it articulates the condition of being poor. In a nation such as America, poverty...

His family is gone. His home is destroyed. His friends are nowhere to be found. Even though there is nothing tangible to keep Tom Joad in his old neighborhood, he has one primary reason for his...

Tom Joad, imprisoned for four years after being charged with manslaughter, learned a lot about life while he was locked up. These lessons impact his character and his way of looking at the world,...

Symbolic of capitalism, the banks represent both a cold force that drives families into poverty as well as the cruel self-interest of the businessmen who reclaim property from those who have given...

Those mountain men walked through town, 5000 strong, each armed with a rifle and challenged the town's people to suppress them. Of course, the town's people left them alone. In a nutshell, Black...

For Connie and Rose, California is a kind of Shangri-La, a place where the streets are paved with gold, the sun never stops shining, and the air is sweet and clear. Rose is much too young and naive...

I assume you are asking for examples of hard work shown in the novel. There are many of those. Steinbeck wanted to show the readers how hard working the migrants were. The hardships of the trip...

Both the Joads and the turtle embark on a dangerous journey. The Joads take as many belongings as they can with them as a defense against the unknown, just as the turtle carries its home on its...

We can learn that, in some situations, the working class has to organize to overcome the power of the moneyed class that controls business. In The Grapes of Wrath the workers do not make any...