The Grapes of Wrath (fiction)
John Steinbeck (1939)

THE A5 BOOK REVIEW

Published in 1939, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath is the powerful Pulitzer Prize winning Great Depression story of the Joads, a farm family from Oklahoma driven from their home under fear of starvation to travel west toward dreams of riches in California.  The desperate family faces continuous challenges along the way as they try to find food, shelter and work, a harrowing and tragic situation shared by many in what was called the Dust Bowl migration.  Steinbeck wrote a series of articles for the San Francisco Chronicle in 1936 on the malnutrition, mistreatment and suffering in migrant labor camps in California, and he used that as background for this epic novel.  The Grapes of Wrath is considered a classic in American literature, controversially capturing history as it happened and notable for the evocative and controversial depiction of the divide between powerful and powerless.  Steinbeck’s plain-spoken story exposes deep and painful moral questions around justice and human rights, questions that are still critically important in America today. 
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OTHER A5 RECOMMENDED TRAVEL BOOKS - JOHN STEINBECK

John Steinbeck is of course one of America's greatest writers, an author of twenty-seven books and a Nobel Prize winner for Literature.  He is probably best known known for his Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939), Cannery Row (1945), Of Mice and Men (1937), and East of Eden (1952).  Learn more about John Steinbeck here.

GREAT QUOTES:

“If he needs a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to me he needs it 'cause he feels awful poor inside hisself, and if he's poor in hisself, there ain't no million acres gonna make him feel rich, an' maybe he's disappointed that nothin' he can do 'll make him feel rich.” 
- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

INTERESTING LINKS:

  • Learn what critics thought at the time of publication in the New York Times review of "John Steinbeck's New Novel", The Grapes of Wrath, written in 1939.
  • Read about the Dust Bowl Migration, as described in the University of California website Calisphere.com
  • The Grapes of Wrath was turned into a best-selling critically-acclaimed movie in 1940, starring Henry Fonda.  In 1989, this film was one of the first 25 films to be selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."  Steinbeck apparently liked Fonda’s performance, saying it made him “believe my own words.”  The movie won Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Supporting Actress.  Click here to see more, or take a look at the trailer below.

THE GRAPES OF WRATH MOVIE TRAILER