Steinbeck`s intention could not have been to urge organised revolt; this is clearly indicated in his letters and articles. He just wanted the migrant workers of California to be given the right to live decently. He offers three suggestions:.
1. that migrant workers be allotted small farms on which they can live and .
work when there is no call for migrant labour.
2. that a Migratory Labour Board be created.
3. that vigilante-ism and terrorism be punished.
Steinbeck`s social philosophy had three roots:.
1. Emerson's faith in the common man and his Protestant self reliance,.
2. Whitman`s religion of the love of all man and his mass democracy.
3. the philosophy of pragmatism and its emphasis on effective action.
we can add a fourth source to the first three (Eisinger`s opinion):.
4. the ideas of Jefferson.
Steinbeck was concerned with democracy, and looked upon agrarianism as a way of life that would enable us to realize the full potentialities of the creed.
The love of earth plays a very important role in the novel. Steinbeck had dealt with this theme of man`s relationship to the land earlier - in `To a God Unknown` and `Of Mice and Men`. In these works the relationship is mystical, symbolic and mythical. These values persist in `The Grapes of Wreath`, the earth motive serves two main functions: first, to signify love; and second, to signify endurance.
At first Grampa is enthusiastic about the prospect of moving to California, but when the moment for departure arrives, he refuses to go. His roots in the ground are too strong, he cannot bear to tear them up. Very soon after the family leaves its native soil, Grampa dies of a stroke. Casy comments on his death with the following words: `Grampa an` the old place, they was jus` the same thing`. The human erosion pictured in the book is as much the result of a separation from the land as it is of poverty. The loss of land leads to a loss of dignity; when the land goes, everything else goes, too.