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Communism In John Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath

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In today’s society there has been an ongoing struggle between the higher class and the lower class, which is portrayed in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, with the struggle for survival of the Joad family during the Great Depression also expressed in the idea of Marxism. The theory of Marxism involved a system containing the upper, middle, and lower class that analyzes ways capitalism can be used against the people. Throughout the novel there are many factors that ties into the struggles during the Great Depression including the sectionalism between classes, and the effects of this on the Joads, migrants as well as the landowners. During the Great Depression, families who worked and lived on the land for almost their whole lives, basically lost everything as the rich pushed the farmers off their homeland for their own economic gain. The bank increasingly gains more power as they were led …show more content…

People were often forced to work with this system, which the rich landowner and the banks controls, in order to provide a stabled living for their family. This made them more vulnerable in doing what those who are higher in class want for their own benefit, despite the consequences or outcome of the process. This system was made to prevent the migrants from coming together and starting a riot, because the “bank isn’t like a man” (Steinbeck 151) meaning that there is no one to be punished for its doings. Tenant farmers were moved off their lands and the migrant families planned to move to places such as California where they believed they were promised work as well as an easier life since they gave up their homes. The rich promises failed as more and more families had

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