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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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John Steinbeck has been a pillar of American literature for decades. His work, especially Grapes of Wrath and The Harvest Gypsies, helped to shed light on some of the issues that plagued California, and the rest of the United States during the Great Depression. His works accentuate the theme of the importance of community, especially when those with the power to help don 't. These novels take place during the Great Depression, a time when there were very few jobs, little stability, widespread poverty, and diminished hopes for the future. This era sets the stage on which these stories take place. During these harsh times, many people turned to the government or banks for help, but they were turned down by the banks because they wanted a profit, or they bankrupted, and the government 's resources were stretched so low they could only help few people.

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In addition to this, the contrast of the individual to that of the larger institutions of the time is also given emphasis, shedding light on how these two groups compare in the context of these struggles. With heavy religious overtones, the journey reveals much of the characters’ relation to their religion, and how these values have an impact on their individual self and their community as they journey westward. This journey and the novel as a whole tells a story of injustice and desperation, but also one of dreams and hope for a new life. In Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes Of Wrath, Steinbeck explores the ideas of the cultural and economic migrant oppression through the destructive forces and injustices of society. Through his rejection of the typical reliance on the institution of religion, Steinbeck demonstrates how the only true way to overcome such societal injustice is through the individual based spirit and in turn the human unity of these

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During the Great Depression, many people were desperate for a job, food, shelter, and security, all of which are standards expected in the modern world. However, in the midst of an economic crisis, the people who had stability despised those who could not achieve a steady way of life. Farmers who hoarded the food that could keep people alive would not help those in need. By selfishly withholding aid, the farmers failed humanity in a way, “that topples all our success,” showing that what they did was not right (Steinbeck 349). When faced with the injustice of people being too poor to afford what they need to survive, those who had resources were morally obligated to help feed those

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The Grapes of Wrath, The Parallels Between Socialist fundamentals and Jim Casy Socialism is a theory of social organization that advocates that the means of fabrication, allocation, and exchange should be owned or regulated by a community as a whole. In the novel, John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, there is a correlation between Jim Casy and the basics of socialism. In this passage below, this correlation will be discussed. Casy is the moral voice of the group in many ways.

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Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, a French novelist who went by the pseudonym George Sand, claimed “charity degrades those who receive it and hardens those who dispense it.” Those who give to others solely believe they are contributing to the greater good. While those receiving more or less don’t reciprocate the same gratitude. At the beginning of adolescence, we are taught it is important to help others less fortunate than one because it is not about individuality — but community. John Steinbeck explores this theme in The Grapes of Wrath while telling the story of a poor family’s journey to California.

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The Grapes of Wrath, one of his most well-known works is exemplary of Steinbeck’s pursuit to bring attention to the lower class and their struggles during the Great Depression, and to hold those who caused the Depression accountable, as seen in his quote “I want to put a tag of shame on the greedy bastards who are responsible for this [the Great Depression and its effects]. I’ve done my damnedest to rip a reader’s nerves to rags” (“The Grapes of Wrath”]. Published in 1939, the novel follows a family of tenant farmers who are forced to turn their land over to the banks and journey across the Dust Bowl to the ‘promised land’ of California (“John Ernst Steinbeck”). The Grapes of Wrath became highly debated and criticized, and many accused Steinbeck of dramatizing the conditions portrayed in the novel to prove a point; however, he had actually underplayed the conditions, feeling that “exact descriptions would have gotten in the way of his story.” Though embraced by the working class, critics condemned the novel as a ‘pack of lies’ and ‘Communist propaganda,’ and the book was banned from 1939 to 1941.

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