What does the title The Grapes of Wrath mean?

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 vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored." The song by Julia Ward Howe is an allusion to Isaiah 63: 4-6. The novel has allusions to vineyards and grapes throughout to continue the allusion. Steinbeck liked the title because it was a march, and he felt this novel was revolutionary. The title gave it a patriotic flavor as well. Steinbeck was hoping to calm critics who would say it had a Communist leaning.

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What does the title The Grapes of Wrath mean?

The Battle Hymn of the Republic, by Julia Ward Howe, contains this phrase.  She wrote the verses after visiting a Union Army camp during the Civil War. It is an abolitionist anthem, written to further the cause of freedom for all, and the abolition of slavery.

 The first lines are:

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

Howe uses imagery of God coming to help the cause of those fighting for justice. She set the poem to the tune of John Brown's Body, another abolitionist song concerning the death of John Brown, who led a raid on Harper's Ferry, VA. Brown intended to free and arm slaves. Brown was captured and hanged.

What is the origin and significance of the title in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath?

The title of John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath is an allusion to a phrase in the very open stanza of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which was sung by supporters of the Union during the American Civil War:

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.

The title was suggested to Steinbeck by his wife; he told his agent that he liked the suggestion because the original song was a march and the subject of his novel was a kind of march. He also said he liked the title because it helped place his book squarely in the American tradition. He hoped it might help protect the book from charges that its politics were un-American.

The title has been seen as relevant to Steinbeck’s novel for a number of different reasons, including the following:

• The title implies the struggle for freedom from oppression and injustice in American history. The novel can be read as depicting a later struggle for freedom from oppression and injustice.
• The title may imply that those guilty of oppression and injustice deserve to be punished and that perhaps eventually they will be punished. In this sense, the title can be read as an ominous warning.
• The title alludes not only to the “Battle Hymn” but also the Bible (specifically to Rev. 14:19). The title thus adds biblical weight to the book and may imply that oppressors and the unjust deserve punishment from God. The title is just one of many Biblical allusions in the novel.
• The title may function as a warning about eventual revolution if injustices are not remedied (see especially Chapter Nine).
• In the words of Richard Gray in his Brief History of American Literature,

As its title indicates, as well as its narrative drive, The Grapes of Wrath is an angry but also an optimistic book, [recalling] “The Battle-Hymn of the Republic” with its prophecy of truth marching to victory . . .