Introductory Notes for
John Steinbeck’s
The Grapes of Wrath
Honors English Composition
Mr. Molloy
John Steinbeck (1902-1968) was born in the Salinas Valley
in California, and that area became the setting for many of
his best known works.
 After high school, he attended Stanford,
and while he didn’t graduate, he did make
some friends in the English Department
who helped him with his writing.
 When Steinbeck was in his twenties,
the United States Stock Market crashed,
and the nation’s attention turned to
economics as the Great Depression began.
 This deeply impacted Steinbeck.
Crowd outside NY Stock

Exchangein 1929
An event at the New York Stock Exchange might seem a
world away from the migrant works in the Salinas Valley,
but it began a series of events which were worsened by
the drought conditions in the Mississippi Valley in 1930.
 A great deal of the workers
who couldn’t find work in
states like Oklahoma moved
to California. There simply
was not enough work for
these people.
 Bank failures (around 20%)
made conditions worse.
Note how unemployment is 25% in

1932.
Before the Depression hit, Steinbeck wrote a romantic piece
called Cup of Gold (1929), which is a tale of swashbuckling
pirates—today it’s hard to imagine that he could have ever
written such a piece.
 The events of the Great Depression deeply affected Steinbeck,
and this is first seen in Pastures of Heaven (1932) which zeroed
in on the rural Central Valley of California that he had known
all of his life. The interconnected people and families in this
novel struggle.
 Before Steinbeck moved completely away from Romanticism
(not concerned with reality) and to Realism, he wrote an
allegory titled Tortilla Flat about “paisanos” enjoying wine &
life after WWI.
 In Dubious Battle (1936) represents a political turn in
Steinbeck’s work as he wrote about attempts to organize fruit
workers. Many accused Steinbeck of being a communist after
this point in his career.

Works


Of Mice and Men (1937) was originally published as a play and it
quickly won over Our Town as the best play that year. Set directly in
the Great Depression, the characters struggle to survive on the Tyler
Ranch and reality smashes against unrealistic dreams.
After writing the short novella The Red Pony (1937), Steinbeck
published his most famous work, The Grapes of Wrath (1939). It was
the most vivid description of The Great Depression and it was both
banned and praised. It tells the story of the Joad family’s struggles to
move to and be successful in California in the wake of the nation’s
severe economic crisis.
The Nobel Prize in Literature 1962 was awarded to John
Steinbeck "for his realistic and imaginative writings,
combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social
perception.“ http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1962/
Themes
Steinbeck lived in an era where it seemed like humankind
was totally abandoned. He noticed the brutality that people
had to endure during the Depression, and it shaped his
views.
 These realities caused Steinbeck to truly embrace Realism –
essentially “telling it like it is” with total frankness.
 But how could man deal with a world that is crushing
him/her? One answer that Steinbeck saw was the concept of
“the group.” There could be power and solace in the
company of others, especially people who were going
through the same things you were.

The Grapes of Wrath:
Setting
From 1932-1936 the annual rainfall didn’t
exceed 12 inches
 Low wheat prices and yields drove farmers
from their lands
 Dust clouds lifted and settled over millions
of acres

2.5 million people living in the Great Plains
moved; 200,000 of which moved to California.
Often, these homeless ex-farmers became ill-paid
and exploited migrant workers.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/dustbowl-mass-exodus-plains/
Dorothea Lange’s photo of Florence Owens Thompson and her children
in early 1936 in Nipomo, California. http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/128_migm.html
Please view these brief videos:
Dust Bowl:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_nG9LX0Ioo
Steinbeck biography:
http://www.biography.com/people/john-steinbeck-9493358#synopsis