Motives In John Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath

Motives in The Grapes of Wrath The Characters in The Grapes of Wrath are going through a constant struggle of trying to find work in their era and will do anything to find success, even when not knowing what is to come for them on their journey for it. The novel is a very tense tone, with practically 0 hope anywhere and is harshly affected by the dustbowl, causing a huge decrease in farming and a huge increase of starvation and unemployments. Unfortunately the Joads are a family of farmers originally from Oklahoma highly affected by the dustbowl and the “livelihood is blown away in the dust storms and they are ravaged by starvation,” (Anderson) And like many of other families like this in the era they decided to listen to the rumors about

If you had any sort of money in this era you always had the upper hand and could take a significant amount of work out of the lower class for very little pay, not only that but if the lower class needed food or money from an upper class american in trade for something they didn’t have to give a fair share to compensate for it. For example an under class-family from The Grapes of Wrath sold their truck for 10 dollars to someone with money and the next day they saw it in the lot selling for $75 because that’s how the economy worked (Steinbeck, 293). Even factory owners treated their employees that poorly having them making 30 cents an hour and then getting it lowered to 25 cents even though they have been doing good work, they just feel like lowering the wages, simply because they can and it makes them feel superior (Steinbeck, 294-295). Working in these types of jobs like this the workers would be cotton picking, or harvesting crops or even something more strenuous and sometimes the boss of this work would pay for how much was collected but it would be a very unfair pay, of course. Not to mention after all of that work, workers were expected to buy their own supplies for this, which was hard to afford especially if they haven’t had any work, so most of the times workers would end up not eating and having to starve just to finally start making money so they could afford the

In the beginning of the novel, the family started off in a poor me type of manner where throughout the novel the Joads learn to keep going and learn that they might have to migrate to find better things. The economy in this time period was really very unpredictable, no one knew what was to come or if they’d survive or find a hint of work anywhere.This was extremely awful because most lower-class americans are questing for the knowledge and safety of self-sufficiency and a home in the world (Kordich, How).

The Joads and The Grapes of Wrath was John Steinbeck 's way of showing the face of The Great Depression and all of the economic and social hardships