candy sticks for his kids.  It's a constant theme in the novel.  My students always find the final scene rather disturbing, and I understand that.  I, however, see it as one last example of hope--an offer of life when death was certain.

The idea of hope is, in my opinion, by far the most important theme in this novel.  Everytime Steinbeck presents something bad or some great challenge to the Joad family, he provides a small, tempting piece of hope.  Grandpa dies, but they form a strong bond with the Wilsons; they learn how poorly Okies are treated, but find a home in the government camp; they can't find work while at the camp, but stumble upon the job picking peaches; they have to leave the peaches, but find good jobs picking cotton; etc. etc.  For as cruel as this novel can be, it is really a statement about human nature and hope.

Class conflict is evident in the status of the work camps and the low pay the workers are paid.  They live in relative squalor and there is often talk of revolt and rebellion.

Strength of family can be seen in the fact that the family stays together through most of the book no matter how tough times get.  Toward the end, people branch off a bit, but they are loving and work together to keep everyone's spirits up and food, clothing, other basic needs taken care of for all members.

You can see the theme of hope in the last few pages where Rose of Sharon is selflessly feeding the old man with her own milk.

I agree with the other answer that says the Grapes of Wrath does not promote hatred between the classes. If anything, the novel goes out of its way to illustrate the idea of cooperative living. For example, when the Joads are at the labor organized migrant camp, the children are taught to play together cooperatively, in a way opposite from a form of play that would promote class hatred (or even the development of classes or cliques). Steinbeck's point is that the capitalist system, not individuals, creates class hatred by encouraging the development of different classes that are antagonist to each other. The novel wants to eradicate, not promote, this kind class hatred.

We can disagree with Steinbeck's solution to the class hatred he saw and documented when he was a journalist during the Great Depression, mostly manifested as upper class hatred toward the poor, but we cannot say he promoted hatred. His communism, whether or not misguided, came out of his experience of seeing the immense suffering of the poor under capitalism in a time of crisis. He believed the leveling of classes he advocated for would help all people, rich and poor, live better, more secure, and less fearful lives. While his book is fiction, he did not make up the historical context of thousands upon thousands of poor farmers displaced by the Dust Bowl and forced to try to earn a living in a society which at the time had no minimum wage or worker protections. Arguing that the poor were promoting class hatred by agitating for a wage that would help them feed their starving families is a very weak argument to make. They were, as Steinbeck shows, simply literally trying to stay physically alive for another day.

Certainly, John Steinbeck meant to expose the plight of thos dispossessed by the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.  However, it does not seem that his aim was to antagonize; instead, he simply wishes for more to be aware of the tragic effects of the depression which saw many people become indigent overnight.

The reality is that hatred between these groups of people--wealthy absentee land-owners, displaced farmers, business owners eking out a living, business owners cashing in on others' misfortunes, bosses, migrant workers, strike-breakers, and more--already existed.  This novel depicted the realities Steinbeck observed.  His point of view was clear, and his condemnation of the powerful elite who were taking advantage of the common man was scathing. 

The political and social unrest of the day could not have been  helped by such incendiary images, it's true.  Tempers no doubt flared, and the anger was probably palpable.  However, I still come back to the idea that the conditions Steinbeck wrote about were real.  If that's the case, it probably acted as much as an agent of hate as it did an agent of change.  Read it, get angry, then do something to make it better, said Steinbeck. 

When the novel was first published, it was openly criticized for being a "communist novel". Many people did not want to face the social injustices described in the book. The idea of strike-breaking, which occurs in the novel, was very unpopular. Large landowners and the manufacturing industry, both of which benefited from keeping wages oppressively low, scorned the book as a communist plot. The entire idea of Casy's "oversoul", the belief that all men are connected to each other and should work together, was thought of mirroring the communist idea of communal living. Since Communism is based on the idea of class warfare, the novel frightened many people who thought Steinbeck was advocating a change in the U.S. government.

The Joads and the other migrants who have been pushed out of their homes by the Dust Bowl first hope they can find work and build new lives in California. The "handbills" entice them to go there and paint a rosy picture of the good life.

As Tom says when they arrive and the situation is worse than they anticipated with no work to be found:

It's jus' such a hell of a long ways. An' we kinda hoped we could get work here an' rent a house to live in.

Later, hope moves from hope of individual (family) survival to hope in group solidarity, a major theme if the novel. Tom expresses that communitarian hope as he leaves, envisioning himself as a spirit or apostle of all the people. He says,

Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. If Casy knowed, why, I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad an’—I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready.

He says his spirit will always be, as well, with his family.

Although hope comes to be embodied in worker solidarity in a struggle against the souless world of capitalism, the hope that springs from individual acts of kindness and generosity is never forgotten. It is movingly expressed at the end of the novel when Rose of Sharon feeds a starving man her own breast milk after her baby is born stillborn.

In chapter 1, we are told that the women searched the men's faces after the dust storms because "the corn could go as long as something else remained".  Hope is what the women searched for because with hope, they could endure hardships.  In chapter 28, in Tom's famous "I'll be everywhere..." speech, he expresses his hope and the hope that Jim Casy had for a brighter tomorrow, a better condition for all people. Ma expresses hope many times in the story when she talks about how if they all work together then change can be accomplished. It especially comes through in her "We are the people" speech in chapter 20. One of the most poignant displays of hope is in the closing scene of the book.  Rose of Sharon, having recently given birth to her stillborn child, along with her family comes across a starving man and his son in a barn.  The man can no longer keep food down because he's denied himself food in order to give food to his son.  Rose of Sharon nurses the man.  The small smile on her face shows hope as she gives life back to the man.

Called a "naturalistic epic," The Grapes of Wrath chronicles the collision of the displaced from the Dust Bowl against the economic force of capitalism in the form of the banks that have expelled them from the land and the corporate owners of large farms who control wages and pricing against the smaller farmers and pickers. It is this conflict between the Haves and the Have Nots that drives the novel and moves readers from sympathy to a certain moral outrage at the exploitation of the lower classes such as the Okies, the Mexicans, and the Native Americans as described in the intercalary chapter, Chapter Nineteen. Indeed, the capitalist is viewed as an uncaring, insensitive, materialistic automaton, whose greed has wrought the Great Depression.

But, in its carefully woven narrative, there is something that transcends this chronicle of class struggle: There is the struggle for the dignity of man. This essential need is acknowledged in the characters of Ma Joad and Tom Joad. For, it is they who extend themselves beyond the moment, holding tenaciously to their beliefs in family, community, and the dignity of man in their willingness to sacrifice themselves for their beliefs. For instance, in Chapter Twenty, Ma tells Tom, 

"You got to have patience....us people will go on livin' when all them people is gone.  Why, Tom, we're the people that live. They ain't gonna wipe us out. Why, were the people--we go on....we keep a-comin'. Don't you fret none, Tom. a different time's comin'."

Tom does have the faith. He joins with Casy in his altruistic efforts to help men organize and have strength in numbers. For Ma and Tom, theirs is the struggle of all humanity, the struggle to end their hungers, physical and spiritual. 

Steinbeck skillfully illustrates American culture in the 1930s through the main story of the Joads' odyssey from the dustbowl of Oklahoma to the migrant camps of California; however, Steinbeck gives us even more Depression-era details through his intercalary chapters, that is "in between" chapters which depart from the story of the Joads but which provide even more insights into the wrenching poverty of millions and the efforts to find a better life by getting on the highway and moving west.

The Joads, like many farmers, lost their land to the banks after crops failed. Years of unmitigated drought led to what is now called the Dust Bowl.  When the farmers were unable to pay the banks, the banks foreclosed, causing economic problems to spiral.  In Steinbeck's novel, the Joads seek a better life in California, but the migrant farms were overrun by all the unemployed and working conditions were dismal.  This led to unionization as workers used their strength in numbers to get better conditions.  This development is reflected in Steinbeck's theme of a united human family of mankind all caring for one another instead of every man for himself.

The impact of Steinbeck's twofold presentation (the main story vs. the intercalary chapters) is powerful.  As readers, our empathy is aroused through the story of all the Joads and Jim Casy as they care for their own family and gradually take on caring for the larger family of all of humankind.  We are moved by Rose of Sharon as she matures from a flighty girl to a caring and mature woman through her pregnancy and the loss of the child.  We see the overpowering strength of Ma as she becomes a mother to everyone in the camps.  We see Tom Joad's efforts to organize workers and Jim Casy's preaching that also shows the interconnectedness of all humans and the need to provide decent conditions for all.  However, the intercalary chapters remind us that this story was being played out over and over again as millions suffered the devastation of lost homes and income during the Depression only to face worse oppression in every new setting.

Much like his contemporary John Dos Passos who uses Newsreels consisting of headlines and fragments of articles from such newspapers as the Chicago Tribune and New York World in his U.S.A. Trilogy, John Steinbeck employs intercalary chapters in Grapes of Wrath that give "a camera's eye" look at realia in the Great Depression.

In Chapter Seven, for instance, Steinbeck describes how used car salesmen responded to the demand for second-hand vehicles during the great exit of the Okies from the Dust Bowl.  Because they knew little about automobiles, these salesmen victimized the desperate dispossessed.  Steinbeck describes them as predatory,

Owners with rolled-up sleeves.  Salesmen, neat, deadly, small intent eyes watching for weaknesses. 

Chapter Nine presents the Jefferson Agrarian theory that people removed from their land will lose much as the women must part with sentimental articles just to keep their family going when the men return with little or no money after trying to sell their farm tools. Chapter Twelve, too, serves as an example of a portrait of Americana in the 1930s as it describes the route that went coast to coast in the U. S., Route 66.  In another chapter of this kind, Steinbeck writes of the fraternity of the displaced Americans, describing one man who made a trailer and has put all his belongings in it; then he waits alongside the highway.  A car finally comes by and the owner hooks his trailer to the automobile, taking the man with his family.

In Chapter Twenty-One, there is a summary of the attitudes of the Okies, who have transformed from"questing people" to "migrants" that have been pushed out by machines.  The transformation of the Okies from hard-working contented farmers to cruel wanderers with "hunger in their eyes" who are dehumanized by the uncaring and exploitive "great owners."  Truly, in this chapter, the alteration of those who are disenfranchised is well protrayed.

In his powerful novel set in the Great Depression, John Steinbeck illustrates through his intercalary chapters the changing face of America, one in which hunger and desperation and alienation and want and sometimes fraternity have become a subsociety in the 1930s.

Hope is shown by the Joads themselves. They go through many  hardships, but they never quit. They learn lessons along the way, and they learn how to committ not just to their families but also to the community, people outside of their families. They survive, and their hope survives with them.

All of the migrants who make it to California show strength, but I think Ma Joad is one of the strongest characters in the novel. I believe Steinbeck is showing us through Ma Joad that strength and courage will get you through anything. You have to keep trying no matter what happens, believing that you'll make it in the end.

The migrants are definitely hard workers. When you have nothing, you have to work hard to survive. The Joads believe in the American Dream, that hard work will give you the opportunity to make something of yourself. They believe California offers them the chance to do this.

The Great Gatsby attempts to present the American dream.  The idea that anybody can be become wealthy, famous, and privileged regardless of their start in life is often seen as a large part of that American dream.  While Gatsby does attain wealth and prestige, we see the darker side of this dream as well.  He is certainly far from happy and dies without the companionship he so longed for.

The Grapes of Wrath deals with a different time in our nation's history.  This novel has a far more obvious dark side because it deals with life during the Great Depression.  Here there is little hope for the American dream.  People are simply searching for a way to survive and provide for their families.  The basic necessities of food and shelter are wanting.  These characters are not looking for wealth and fame like Gatsby in the Jazz Age. 

Maya Angelou writes from a different perspective than either Fitzgerald or Steinbeck.  For starters, she is an African American female.  Her poetry often stems from her personal struggles and triumphs in America.  Angelou's writing is frequently autobiographical.  She also deals with the racial discrimination and inequality in America. 

Steinbeck tries to show America as it was, without the romanticism of nostalgia.  There are no simple people: the heroes are not without fault and the villains are not simply evil.  The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl was the final blow to the terrible farm prices of the 1920s.  The odd chapters from 1-11 show the history of how those who suffered came about.

America is shown as a place where there is opportunity, but the people already in place (there first) do not want those who come in (immigrants) to take what little there is left.  This shows the a brief history of our immigration patterns of the settled not wanting to give into any new people coming in to "take" jobs away.