The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck is a classic novel about the movement of thousands of men and women during the Dust Bowl migration in the 1930s. It explains the hardships and life of the farmland people who had to work hard each day to provide food for their families. One family in Oklahoma, the Joad family, lives on a family farm and is forced off it. They travel to the West and the promised lands of California.

One theme in the book is that people need to stay together to survive, and they’ll do anything to survive together. One example is the Joad and the Wilson family. When the two families met, they became one family quickly sharing their hardships and helping each other out. Grandpa gets sick and the Wilsons offer a tent for him to sleep in. Though Grandpa died, the Wilsons did try to help. “‘How’d you like ta come in our tent?’ she asked.’ You kin lay down on our mattress an’ rest’”(338). When the Wilsons offered their tent to Grandpa, the Joad, and Wilson Family became one family. The Joad’s then offered to fix the Wilsons' broken car, and later, they drove together down the road. This is because when they were two separate families, they were struggling to survive by themselves. But being helped them survive better and make new friends and family.

  Another theme that can be derived from this book is that humans will do anything to survive and gain money. The Joad family went to work for people paying 5 cents a box of peaches picked. When they get there, they start to work. Later Tom meets Casy, an old friend of theirs. Casy tells Toms that they were promised 5 cents a box, and when they got there, they were getting paid 2.5 cents a box. This caused Casy and a lot of other people to go on strike. When the Joads went, they were getting paid 5 cents a box, but when Casy was murdered, and the strike stopped, the Joads were getting paid 2.5 cents a box. “‘Lookie, Tom,’ he (Casy) said at last, ‘We come to work there. They says it’s gonna be fi’ cents. There was a hell of a lot of us. We got there an’ they says they’re payin’ two an’ a half cents’” (763). This shows that the people were trying to get the maximum money with the least amount they were paying to their employees. This caused the Joad family to move somewhere else for a better paying job. They moved to a cotton picking place where they can make enough money for everyone to eat. 

The book Grapes of Wrath is a classic book that many have read. It shows the readers how difficult it was to live in the 1930s and how ruthless people with money are. People just take the land for their own needs without paying anything back. An example of this was when at the beginning of the book, farmers were forced off of their land by a bank. “The bank told him, ‘Clear those people out or it’s your job’”(165). This shows that people are ruthless at getting what they want. I would recommend this book for people interested in what life was like for farmland people during the first great depression. This book also shows the evil of man’s greed for money, doing whatever it takes to get the most money with the least work.