Destruction In John Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath

In his novel The Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck suggests that similarly to how a seed needs to be buried in order to grow, something or someone has to come to an end for something better to begin. Ends come in the form of death and destruction in the novel that pave the way f

Steinbeck shows the reader how the past has to be buried for something better to emerge or for a future to be possible. The Joads house had to be destroyed for them to realize that there is nothing left for them in Oklahoma. An end of an era has arrived and in order for the Joads to begin a new one they have to put an end to the memories of the past. Ma Joad burns her box of Oklahoma memories that included letters, photographs, and clippings, decimating it to dust. When she placed the box in the stove, “instantly the fire sighed up and breathed over the box”(96), almost as if in a sigh of relief, so that a new life can begin to grow. Ma knows that in order to fully grow into her life in California, she has to destroy the roots she still has in the past. The destruction of these roots is a sort of liberation for Ma and allows for the

Yet, in The Grapes of Wrath, the end of a baby’s life leads to the rebirth of another. At the end of the novel, Rose of Sharon has a stillborn baby. Rather than weaken her, however, the death strengthens her. Once the seed, or embryo in this case, is gone and carried away, Rose of Sharon is able to bloom into a flower of adulthood. She transforms into a better person and is no longer the naive, selfish, self-pitying girl she was for the majority of the novel. This transformation from a seedling into a sap is clear when she agrees to feed the starving man her breast milk without a second thought, despite the tragedy she just went through. Rose and her family refuse to slip into despair with the death of the baby, as well as the death of many other family members, and