The Grapes of Wrath

Name: The Grapes of Wrath
Rating: 5 (1 reviews)
Author: John Steinbeck
ISBN: 9780143039433

John Steinbeck • 1939

Devastation Rating

Existential Dread

poverty family literary fiction historical injustice survival

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Our Take

The Joads are driven from Oklahoma and the road west is not salvation but a longer kind of suffering. Steinbeck writes poverty as something imposed by design rather than luck, and his anger is in every sentence. The final image is biblical and desolate and unforgettable. America, in its shame.

Appears In

► Poverty in Fiction — Stories From the Margins ► Labor and Exploitation — The Cost of Work ► The Great Depression — When the Economy Becomes a Catastrophe ► Homelessness and Poverty — What the Margins Look Like From Inside ► Famine and Hunger — The Politics of Who Eats

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