Introduction
Author Background
John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California, USA in 1902. After high school he entered Stanford University majoring in English, then in 1925, moved to New York City to pursue a career in writing. He was unsuccessful and returned, disappointed, to California the following year. Though his first novel, Cup of Gold, was published in 1929, it attracted little literary attention. Two subsequent novels, The Pastures of Heaven and To A God Unknown, met the same fate. After moving to the Monterey Peninsula in 1930, Steinbeck made his home in Pacific Grove. Here, Steinbeck found material he would later use for two more works, Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row. With Tortilla Flat (1935), Steinbeck’s career took a decidedly positive turn, receiving the California Commonwealth Club’s Gold Medal. In 1937, Of Mice and Men was published. Two years later, the novel was produced on Broadway and made into a movie. In 1940, Steinbeck won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for The Grapes of Wrath, bringing to public attention the plight of dispossessed farmers. During the war years, Steinbeck served as a war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune. Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. He married three times and had two sons.
He died in December 1968 in New York City. His ashes are interred in the Garden of Memories cemetery in Salinas, the valley he had written about with such passion.
Literature Review
Tom Joad, newly released from prison after serving a sentence for manslaughter, makes his way home, and along the way is joined by Jim Casy, a former preacher. Tom learns that his family has been evicted from the farm and has moved in with Uncle John. When the two men reach Uncle John’s home, they find the family, preparing to drive to California. The Joads’ and Casy head out along Route 66, joining an exodus of poor tenant farmers heading west.
They encounter many obstacles on the journey, as well as warnings that the jobs they expect in California are illusory. Upon arrival in California, they find that their trials are far from over. Steinbeck masterfully depicted the struggle to retain dignity and to preserve the family in the face of disaster, adversity, and vast, impersonal commercial influences. He based his epic on his visits to the migrant camps and tent cities of the workers, seeing firsthand the horrible living conditions of migrant families. When Steinbeck received the Novel Prize for Literature in 1962, he plainly stated his purpose in writing the novel: “I want to put a tag of shame on the greedy bastards who are responsible for this (the Depression and the plight of the worker).
The American Dream theme in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath has been extensively studied by scholars, especially in terms of economic suffering, social justice, and the novel’s criticism of capitalism.
The review of literature below considers major scholarly contributions that discuss how Steinbeck depicts the American Dream as a myth for the working class, providing insights into the novel’s literary and historical relevance.
The American Dream and Economic Disillusionment Shillinglaw (1996) states that The Grapes of Wrath is an open defenestration of the classic image of the American Dream in depicting the systemic exclusion of the underclass from acquiring wealth. Through the novel, it is apparent that diligence does not guarantee financial success in the corporate-driven economy and society mired in inequity. In the same manner, Owens (1989) contends that Steinbeck employs the journey of the Joads to expose the myth of California as a place of opportunity in which migrant laborers are exploited to the hilt instead of being economically raised.
Heavilin (2002) explains Steinbeck’s description of tenant farmers in relation to the historical reality of the Great Depression, juxtaposing the themes of the novel with the actual experience of workers who were forced out of employment. The paper highlights that in The Grapes of Wrath, the American Dream is portrayed as a promise unkept for so many, emphasizing that economic institutions work in the interests of the rich against the poor.
Individualism vs. Collective Action Benson (1984) examines the development of Tom Joad’s character as a symbol of Steinbeck’s move from an individualistic to a collective conception of the American Dream. The novel implies that only through solidarity in the community can one survive and advance, a drastic shift from the classic American ideals.
Gladstein (1986) is also in support of this analysis, arguing that Steinbeck’s novel follows socialist principles, with the defense of workers’ rights and united resistance as a better option to the oppressive capitalist society.
Lisca (1970) identifies how Steinbeck’s use of intercalary chapters adds force to this idea, creating an overall social critique that transcends the Joads’ individual narrative. The chapters present the common suffering of thousands of families who have been displaced, and the need for reform on a systemic level is reaffirmed.
Symbolism and Illusion of the American Dream Parini (1994) writes about the symbolism of The Grapes of Wrath, specifically the road as a metaphor for hope and disillusionment. He contends that the westward journey symbolizes the quest for a better life but ultimately reveals the illusions of the American Dream. Likewise, Wyatt (1990) analyzes how the novel concludes with Rose of Sharon’s act of selflessness to imply a redefinition of the American Dream, focusing on human kindness rather than material achievement.
Stokes (2013) examines the use of nature in the novel, observing that Steinbeck employs environmental devastation as a metaphor for economic collapse. The Dust Bowl represents not just the collapse of agricultural sustainability but also the general breakdown of the American Dream for migrant farmers. Steinbeck’s Narrative Techniques and Social Commentary Pizer
(1975) maintains that Steinbeck’s interweaving of fiction and documentary realism makes his critique of the American Dream more effective. His portrayal of the suffering of the migrants is not just a fictional creation but a critical social commentary intended to inspire empathy and action.
In a later work, Mitchell (2017) contends that the novel’s emphasis on economic injustice continues to be relevant today, especially in debates about income inequality and exploitation of labor. Steinbeck’s Employment of Biblical Allegory in Criticizing the American Dream John Steinbeck’s
The Grapes of Wrath is richly infused with biblical allegory, which is an effective tool to criticize the American Dream. Through the employment of religious imagery, biblical allusions, and archetypal characters, Steinbeck recontextualizes the story of economic hardship and displacement in a moral and spiritual context. His recourse to biblical motifs not only strengthens the novel’s emotional resonance but also reveals the hypocrisies of the American Dream, indicating that striving for material gain results in agony more than in salvation.
Significance of the Study
In The Grapes of Wrath, the migrants thought that the American Dream was such a simple concept: go west, get a job, and become rich. However, they did not realize that an ideal life was nearly impossible and it corrupted the minds of those in search of it. John Steinbeck emphasized the unattainable nature of the American Dream of economic stability in The Grapes of Wrath through the Joads’ cross country migration, their constant and unpredictable changes in employment, and their eventual failure to find success in California. The Joads’ migration from Oklahoma to California destroyed the existence of an economically secure life. Before the Joad family headed west, they had a home, land, and money. Migrating to California meant starting all over again. The Joads decided to leave their old life in hopes of beginning a new, successful one. And many more migrants in search of the American Dream were headed west, as well. The Joads did not think about the repercussions that occurred from this move. Never once did they doubt that “there’s work there, and never gets cold” 3 . They were drawn to the rumors that insisted “you can reach out anywhere and pick an orange”3 . Exotic descriptions like this, from an unheard-of land, propelled the Joads and other migrants towards an unknown paradise.
The Grapes of Wrath depicted the impossibility of the American Dream and defined the harsh reality of the dirty, corrupted, and greedy nightmare that it truly was. The Joads, and other migrants, learned that not all Americans shared hospitality, kindness, or appreciation. The Joads’ experience showed that the world was full of greedy individuals who fended for themselves. No one wanted the Joads or any migrant families to encroach upon their land, steal their jobs, and consume their food. The treatment the Joads received was nothing like the American Dream they imagined. They wanted to feel welcomed and immediately gain wealth. However, their lives were slowly deteriorating to nothing. The Joads’ constant failure to find lasting and supportive jobs led to financial decline, lessening the possibility that the American Dream would come to fruition. All migrants had hopes of finding a better life for their children; however, The Grapes of Wrath defined the limits set forth for achieving prosperity. Regardless of the Joads’ hope for prosperity, they were grouped with the underprivileged migrants and fought for every job offer they found, if any. Employers did not trust the migrants, and lines were set between the rich and the poor. Tom soon realized that he and his family can never be treated the same as these inhabitants; they would always be outsiders. When Tom picked a fight with an officer while staying in a government camp, Jim Casey fended him off and then took the blame for Tom and was sent to prison. This affected the Joad family‘s stability to settle down and ascertain proper jobs; they were always on the move because of Tom and his short temper. Their hardships and reality of life, from staying in dismal government camps, to losing family members, to not attaining work, showed that California and the road to it were not what they thought it would be. As stated earlier, the Joads were not the only family on the road; competition from other migrants limited the ability for employment. As seen in The Grapes of Wrath,
California was not as it was perceived to be. The American Dream depicted California as a paradisiacal land; in reality, migrants were thrown into poverty and were forced to survive, contrary to what the American Dream envisioned. By the end of the novel, any iota of hope the Joads had for the American Dream was long forgotten.