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Grapes Of Wrath Family Analysis

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Family, Home, and Community in The Grapes of Wrath In the novel The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, a major theme is that of changing home, family, and community. Throughout the book, the characters' experiences change their views on the varying importance of these things. From the very first chapter to the last, the importance of family is emphasized even as the concept of family changes. The meaning of home also changes over the course of the story. The characters go from viewing home as a location, to viewing it as the people they love. With home and family comes community. Along with the changing of their lives, the people around them change as well. As their community changes, those who are part of it grow closer to becoming family. The …show more content…

“In the evening a strange thing happened: the twenty families became one family, the children were the children of all. The loss of home became one loss, and the golden time in the West was one dream” (Steinbeck 193). Like the Joads and Wilsons, the migrant community has disregarded the traditional biological family in favor of taking care of themselves and others as a whole. Rather than one lone family struggling to survive, they have become one family with limited but adequate resources. With this merging of family and community, all parties involved have something to gain. Home changes along with family and community throughout the book. For example, the migrant communities and families go from having no home at all to having a home anywhere along the road as long as they are together, "Every night relationships that make a world, established; and every morning the world torn down like a circus"(Steinbeck 194). They used their community's sense of fellowship and family to make a new home anywhere they went. As long as they were surrounded by their now-larger family, the people of the migrant community would always have a

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The tone of chapter 11 in John Steinbeck's, “The Grapes of Wrath,” is sympathetic, sad and hopeless. His word choice and syntax show how the sad houses were left to decay in the weather. His use of descriptive words paints a picture in the reader's mind. As each paragraph unfolds, new details come to life and adds to the imagery. While it may seem unimportant, this intercalary chapter shows how the effects of the great depression affected common households.

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John Steinbeck’s classic novel, The Grapes of Wrath, explains the story of the Joad family while simultaneously dealing with eternal human issues. We open on Tom Joad, fresh out of prison, hitchhiking his way back home after killing a man with a shovel. From there we travel through ideas of religion, capitalism, xenophobia, and determination. As Tom begins walking home from where he was dropped off, he runs across his childhood preacher, alone and barefoot, and discusses ideas of human desire and sin within the church after learning that Casy is no longer a member. Continuing on his way home, Tom finds his family’s barn abandoned and his neighbors gone.

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The term “American dream” was coined in 1931 by James Adams. It is defined as the dream of a land where life is fuller and richer for everyone. This dream has been shared by millions of people all over the world since America was discovered. People such as European immigrants, and even people born in the Americas who wanted to expand west. The Joad family’s journey is a prime example of the determinism families had to try to live the American dream.

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Whenever war takes place, people are likely to migrate to another place. As a result, the so called “home” no longer exists because of the idea of moving to another place for survival. Notice the way he uses the language of the two lines. While “strolling” has a connotation of being mobile, “boarded-up” is fixed in a place. In other words, while one childhood is unsettling because of war, the other

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