John Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath

The novel The Grapes of Wrath written by John Steinbeck is a beautifully described tale of hardship and perseverance. Steinbeck started off by placing the scene in the Dust Bowl and then told the story of the Joads family and their journey to California. The Joads were among many thousands of families who lost everything in the Dust Bowl and who fled the country’s heartland to find work.
When the Joads arrived in California, they found it to be overrun with workers, and still struggled to survive. Steinbeck ended the book in an abandoned barn, the outside world flooded, literally, and the Joads family having to make a hard decision. The story ends with Rose of Sharon nursing a man back from the edge of starvation with her dead baby’s milk.
We all go through grief in our lives, and in the novel Tom reveals that Uncle John once had a wife and that she died of a bellyache that didn’t get attention after she told her husband. He blamed himself for her death. It reads, “He figures it’s his fault his woman died. Funny fella. He’s all the time makin it up to somebody- givin’ kids stuff, droppin’ a sack of meal on somebody’s porch. Give away about ever’thing he got, an’ still he ain’t very happy.” (73) The way Uncle John dealt with his grief may not have been very helpful but that’s how he coped. He pushed through the obstacle of his wife’s death by blaming himself and trying to make up for that by random acts of kindness. Again, Steinbeck used characterization to effortlessly insert his underlying message of how there are many obstacles in our lives but to get through them you have to press on and create new paths out of the hitches in the
Steinbeck highlights not only the deeply personal experiences of the Joad family, but he delivers this astounding philosophy for humans to break through their problems and get on the better side of things. John Steinbeck shows this underlying message through two categories: a) the setting of the book and b) the characterization of the actors. When given a setting to overcome, it is usually a literal overcoming. Such like when the crop owners had to push through their dismal lives after the Dust Bowl and try to find a better life out in California, or when the flood pushed through the camps of the migrants in California they worked and worked till their legs gave out. But they didn’t stop there; they kept figuring new ways and new ideas to solve problems. They were given a physical obstacle instead of the emotional/personal issue the characters are usually given, such as starting a new life as crop pickers for low wages, and maybe even starving to death. Some made it, but some ended up like the man in the barn in chapter 30, not haven eaten in 6 days and having to drink the milk produced from a woman. On the other hand, when the characters of The Grapes of Wrath were given obstacles to hop over, they didn’t face physical issues but more personal issues. The preacher, Jim Casy, he lusted after women “on the grass” after he preached and he didn’t feel bad about it.