The Grapes of Wrath

1. The Grapes of Wrath has multiple settings since the Joads are traveling from Oklahoma to California on Route 66. The novel starts in Oklahoma in the 1930s during the Great Depression, and more specifically the Dust Bowl. Where instead of rain there are giant winds. The narrator explains that "Little by little the sky was darkened by the mixing dust, and the wind felt over the earth, loosened the dust, and carried it away. The wind grew stronger. The rain crust broke and the dust lifted up out of the fields and drove gray plumes into the air like sluggish smoke" (Steinbeck 2). Making the Dust that spread throughout the Midwest. The novel continues to be set in Oklahoma to Route 66 and is described as the "path of people in flight" , a place where people can fulfill their hopes in dreams. The rest of the story is in California.

2. Steinbeck believes that the proper relationship to the land is to have a connection to it. That "The man who is more than his chemistry, walking on the earth, turning his plow point for a stone, dropping his handles to slide over an outcropping, kneeling in the earth to eat his lunch; that man who is more than his elements knows the land that is more than its analysis" (Steinbeck 115). Farming families, like the Joads, have a grown on the land, fought for the land, and therefore have a better understanding of the land then the tractor men could. The new owner and the bank break the bond by evicting the owners of the land. The machine men will never have a connection with the land like the farming families. "But the machine man, driving a dead tractor on land he does not know and love, understands only chemistry; and he is contemptuous of the land and of himself" (Steinbeck 116)

3. The first half of the book Jim Casy questioned Christianity. He says that "maybe it's all men an' all women we love; maybe that's the Holy Sperit—the human sperit—the whole shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul ever'body's a part of.' He decides ‘There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue . There's just stuff people do." (Steinbeck 24). But later his thoughts evolve and he relizes, "how we was holy when we was one thing, an' mankin' was holy when it was one thing. An' it on'y got unholy when one mis'able little fella got the bit in his teeth an' run off his own way, kickin' an' draggin' an' fightin'. Fella like that bust the holi-ness. But when they're all workin' together, not one fella for another fella, but one fella kind of harnessed to the whole shebang—that's right, that's holy" (Steinbeck 81). Showing to be righteous, one person is working for the greater good, something bigger than their self.. And to be bad is to be selfish, and to do something for one's personal gain, like the banks. And as he travel with the joads he