Realism In The Grapes Of Wrath

The Grapes of Wrath is about the Joads family and their journey during the Great Depression to California to find much needed work. During the journey, they experience excessive hardships that cause that an uprooting of many of the family members. Despite what they endure they hope for a bright future. Steinbeck uses different narrative styles and other elements to establish a strong sense of realism and authenticity to the novel. He uses intercalary chapters to give the readers a real grasp of what happened during the Great Depression. Steinbeck uses different language also. The characters talk very slang and improper which allows the readers to better understand how they spoke in the 1930’s. A very important narrative style Steinbeck uses is the chapters in between the story, the odd chapters, called intercalary chapters. Theintercalary chapters in The Grapes of Wrath provide a broad picture of what was happening. They allowed the readers to understand that this hardship was happening to a lot of people back then. The intercalary chapters shaped an image of the economic history that the story was based on. Without them the readers would only know the Joad’s story and, not get the full view that the whole country experienced this depression. They describe
The setting, symbolism, foreshadowing, and other things establish this sense. The setting of the late 1930’s with the great depression and the migrant locations in the book actual happened to people. This gives readers the sense that it really could have happened. The intercalary chapters however present a factual sense that creates the thought of authenticity. “Once California belonged to Mexico and its land to Mexicans; and a horde of tattered feverish Americans poured in.” (Steinbeck 231). This foreshadows the horde of migrants pouring into the west. It also is a fact that gives the reader a sense that the whole book really