Cold Mountain
When John Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath the United States was amidst the Great Depression. Life was hard for the average American during the 1930s. The Depression was the worst and longest period of high unemployment and low business activity in modern times. An ecological terror, known as the Dust Bowl, further complicated matters for small farmers. These two phenomena allowed Steinbeck to create his best selling and most influential book, The Grapes of Wrath. To appeal to these victims of the Depression, Steinbeck contained highly socialistic characters and themes that are frequently revealed throughout the novel. To illustrate these principles, it is clear that the Bible is the novelist’s main point of reference. Using his pen, he manipulated the social and economic problems of the 1930s to convert his readers to socialism and Christianity. Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath is not merely a novel concerning the Great Depression and the evils of capitalism, but rather propaganda for the Christian religion. In his novel, Steinbeck records the plight of sufferers of the Great Depression. The Depression began in October 1929, when stock values in the United States dropped rapidly. The downw
Tom is at first oblivious to what Casy has been trying to tell him, but soon after the death of Casy, Tom comes to an understanding on Casy’s pragmatism, humanism, and transcendentalism. In fact Casy seems to have a mystical presence despite his death. Tom even tells Ma “Seems like I can see him sometimes” (Steinbeck 572). The structure of The Grapes of Wrath also seems to mirror the bible in some respects. “Here’s me, been a-goin’ into the wilderness like Jesus to try to find out somepin. Almost got her sometimes, too. But it’s in the jail hous I really got her” (521) To further add to it’s biblical significance, The Grapes of Wrath is written in much the same style as the King James Bible. Both texts are written with intercalary chapters. Another significant biblical allusion is the fact that the novel starts out in the drought of the Midwest in the late 1930s, and ends in flood. At the turn of the century, a growing interest in Marxism, socialism, or communism, was instilled in the oppressed working class of capitalism. By the end of the 19th century, America had become an industrial power and with the advent of the Spanish American War, and the World Wars to follow, America was to become a world military power. Domestically, however, a new awareness of the cost of this growth became a widespread theme in such works of literature as Stephen Crane’s A girl of the Streets and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. Such literature was often based on social motives, and became an influence on society (Owens 1).
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Approximate Word count = 1670
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)
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