John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath represents one of the most popular American literary works from the 20th century. The novel describes the relocation of a tenant farmer family from Oklahoma, where drought and dust storms exhausted the soil, and how they moved to California. Instead of various job offers, they encountered even greater poverty and prejudice there. The social criticism of the novel provoked much attention from the critics who reproached the author for the alleged unjust representation of the conditions in California and the character of the Okie migrants.
In the diploma thesis, I wanted to present the historical background of the novel and its most important responses. I also wanted to establish how appropriately Steinbeck pictured the conditions among the immigrants. The thesis consists of three parts – the description of the making of the novel, the description of the historical background and the description of the criticism. The historical background stands for the migration of the agricultural population from the southern Great Plains to the West in the 1930s.
The American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California by the historian James N. Gregory and a collection of essays A Casebook on The Grapes of Wrath edited by Agnes McNeill Donohue were the most important sources for the thesis. We established that Steinbeck based his writing with well-researched data and that he explained the conditions in a relatively correct fashion.
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