Semester two Blog #13

Migration, people migrate all the time due to certain situations either economical, political, or due to war. The biggest migration was brought on by the Great Depression. Author John Steinbeck describes the Great Depression with the Joad family he explains Dust Bowl farmers and their hardships by the Great Depression and within the family. The entire novel focuses on the Joad family, as a reader you follow through their almost satirical tragedies and losses.


When people leave home it should not be a great deal, especially when you leave with your entire family, like the Joads. Steinbeck exaggerated the migration throughout the Joad family by numerous deaths and tragic stories. Its almost like the novel were written like a soap opera. Meaning too much drama not enough reality. Steinbeck wrote Grapes of Wrath as if he was a first time learner about the Great Depression, and he decided to write a satire novel about the topic.

If the story were written and focused more on one point of view i.e the Dust Bowl farmers I feel that would have been a sympathetic enough story, since Steinbeck seemed to have written the book for sympathy. He could have done this by sharing brief stories about families fighting to give up their land and let their crops die, or simply show one character traveling along and observing families because starved, sick, and tired of the migration.


Steinbeck spent too much time on one family, which might have seemed like a great idea. But it is like the writing tip Concerts not Pancakes he started out with the idea of an up close, a fictional story about a family during the Great Depression. But there wasn't enough struggle or drama in the book so he went through it again and threw in some deaths and and a still-born child and extreme religious views.


I struggle, when i am told to write about a balance between the two it is a struggle for me seeing as one side got most of the attention throughout the novel (the Joad family) I think if Steinbeck would have even created a equally balanced out novel it would have made the book that much more confusing because there would have been abrupt transitions from chapter to chapter.