The Grapes Of Wrath Summary

The Grapes Of Wrath by John Steinbeck

 

The Grapes of Wrath is about an ex-convicted man named Tom Joad during America's Great Depression. He and his family are forced to leave Oklahoma and set out for California. Thousands of people are along with them in search of new jobs to survive. During the journey, some relatives such as the grand-father and the grand-mother, die on the road. Two of the family members leave the group and separate. The remaining members continue as nothing is left in Oklahoma. 

Once in California, they find a state full of abuses, exploitation and starvation. After they leave that place, they find a better one which offers them better conditions and protection, but not for all the families. 

Jim Casy, a friend of Tom and a former preacher who lost his faith, works as a labor organizer and tries to help the other inmigrants, but is involved in a violent strike in which he is fatally beaten. Tom witnesses it and kills the attacker. Tom runs away from there to avoid getting arrested.

Tom says good bye to his mother and promises to help the opressed ones. The Joad daughter, Rose of Sharon has a stillborn baby. When the family shelters in an old barn, they find a boy and his father, who is dying of starvation and Rose of Sharon feeds him with her breast milk.

John Steinbeck

 

 John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. (February 27, 1902 to December 20, 1968) was a Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and the author of Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden. Steinbeck dropped out of college and worked as a manual laborer before achieving success as a writer. His works often dealt with social and economic issues. His 1939 novel, The Grapes of Wrath, about the migration of a family from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl to California, won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. Steinbeck served as a war correspondent during World War II, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.