The Grapes of Wrath

19 So the angel thrust his sickle into the earth and gathered the vine of the earth, and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. 20 And the winepress was trampled outside the city,...

The turtle in chapter 3 of The Grapes of Wrath is significant because it represents the tenacity and persistence of the Joad family and other migrants in confronting and surmounting obstacles...

Of the inner, or intercalary chapters, of his classic of American literature, John Steinbeck wrote, With the rhythms and symbols of poetry one can get into a reader—open him up and while he is...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

In Chapter 10 of The Grapes of Wrath after Tom has hitchhiked and walked many miles, he arrives home. After a truck leaves, Tom sits on the doorstep and Ma talks with him. She expresses her...

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...

One of the main lessons that we see taught throughout the book is that generosity can come in all forms, and that even in your own darkest hour, generosity can be the most powerful thing you can...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

The character of Jim Casy moves from being an energetic preacher to shunning God. He then becomes something of an apostle. Finally, as his initials "J.C." suggest, the character becomes...

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...

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...

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,...

In the case of The Grapes of Wrath, the American Dream is blocked by rich landowners and bankers that kept workers from getting a foothold and rising in society. Immigrant workers were part of the...

By chapter 18, Ma is just barely keeping the family together. She has never found much support or guidance from either organized religion or from the law—and that is not likely to change anytime...

What is so disturbing about the symbolism of this act in Chapter 5 is the way that the banks and the financial system that created the logic which drove the tenants from their land and forced them...

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...

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 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...

Tom Joad has just been let out of jail on parole, and he's on his way back to see his folks. They don't know about his release and so he wants to give them a nice surprise. As he and the preacher...

There are many symbols in the first chapter of Steinbeck's work that will come back in different forms throughout the novel. One of the most powerful symbols is the covering of the sky, blocking...

The "code" that develops in the camps is outlined in Chapter 22. The migrants who have made Weedpatch their home have decided that justice and care will only be accomplished by their own...

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...

Throughout his novel, John Steinbeck makes use of various methods of narration. One of these is with the intercalary chapters which often inform of the conditions in the historical context of the...

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...

Pa is working on the truck, nailing the top rails on its sides when Tom Joad first sees him. Although he moves lithely, Pa is "an aging, graying man" with "a grizzled, bearded face". He is...

Although all the migrants heading to California are in the same boat (metaphorically speaking), there's often a good deal of animosity between them. After all, they're effectively in competition...

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...

Uncle John is haunted by the death of his young wife many years before. They had been married only four months. She had been pregnant. When she complained of pain in her stomach, John dismissed it,...

The name Muley Graves is a great example of a charactonym. A charactonym is a character's name which implies something distinctive about the character. In the Harry Potter books, for example, Draco...

This description of Tom's mother occurs about one-third of the way into Chapter 8. Open up to Chapter 8 in your copy of the novel, and go ahead and skip past a few pages. Now start skimming,...

There's sort of an old truism about the distinction between those who earn their living performing manual labor and those who sit at desks and stare at computer screens, or perform other types of...

John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath is set in the 1930s in the midst of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. Life is hard for the Joad family before they get evicted from their land and begin...

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...

Steinbeck’s description of the land turtle in Chapter Three is at once keenly observed and supremely realistic, and of course obviously symbolic. The turtle is slow. Its movements require...

Steinbeck says of his alternating use of "inner" chapters that the structure of his novel "is very carefully worked out." He also called these inner chapters "generals," to "emphasize the point...