FREE ESSAY ON GRAPES OF WRATH

GRAPES OF WRATH

Purpose
Essentially, The Grapes of Wrath is a novel of social protest. It was designed to inform
the public of the migrant's plight. It is a plea for the land owners of California and
the banks in the dust bowl states to be more tolerant. It shows how the migrants were
made to starve by the California land owners and banks just so they could turn a profit.
It shows many of the methods that they used to cheat the migrants out of money and keep
them from organizing.
Ma Joad
Ma Joad is the backbone of the Joad family. When things were really bad the family turned
to her and not to Pa. The family gauged their own emotions by looking at her reaction.
She knew that if she faltered then the whole family would collapse. She is always
concerned for the welfare of her own family, but still tries to help others as much as
possible as show by her helping of the Wilsons and when she gave food to the children in
the camp when she barely had enough to feed the family anyway. She fights throughout the
book to keep the family together, and without her the family would have fallen apart
quickly. In spite of this she still sees that the family is breaking apart. She fights
this as much as possible, but isn't completely successful. She knows that if Pa ever
gives up, the family will collapse, so sometimes she goads him into anger so that he
doesn't.
Jim Casy
The preacher, Jim Casy, can be seen as a modern day Christ figure, except for without the
Christian Doctrine. The initials of his name, J.C., are the same as Jesus Christ. When he
is saying grace in chapter eight, he compares himself to Jesus: I been in the hills,
thinkin', almost you might say like Jesus wen into the wilderness to think His way out of
troubles.(pg 70-71) Casy believed in the Emersonian Over-Soul, that we are all have a
small part of a larger soul, and everybody is holy. As Tom said, one time he went out in
the wilderness to find his soul, an' he foun' he jus' got a little piece of a great big
soul.(pg 373) He just wants to be around people because he sees everybody as being holy.
He also thinks that people working in cooperation is holy: When they're all workin'
together, not one fella for another fell, but one fella kind of harnessed to the whole
shebang -- that's right, that's holy(pg 71). In the first half of the book Casy is
thinking and forming his ideas. He changes from a thinker to an man of action when he
sacrifices himself for Tom. When in prison Casy sees the advantage of organizing people
to achieve a common goal. When Casy tried to put his ideas into action he, like Christ,
aroused the antagonism of the people in authority and was brutally slain. He died, like
Christ saying to his crucifiers, You don' know what you're a-doin.
Bibliography
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