The Grapes of Wrath CONTEXT

Question 1

When was the novel published?

Answer 1

1939

Question 2

When was the declaration of independence made?

Answer 2

4th July 1776

Question 3

What is realism?

Answer 3

1855-1900

CONTENT
Includes Social Realism/ Regional Realism
Common characters not idealised (immigrants, labourers), class systems, society corrupted by materialism, moralism through observation

STYLE
objective narrator, the dialogue has many voices

EFFECT
social realism aims to change social problems, Civil war demands truer literature

Question 4

What genre is the novel?

Answer 4

social realism

Question 5

When did the pilgrims first travel to America?

Answer 5

The Mayflower was an English ship that transported the first English Puritans, known today as the Pilgrims, from Plymouth, England, to the New World in 1620 where they sought religious freedom in the Eden like America.

Question 6

What is the Puritan Work Ethic?

Answer 6

The idea that through hard work Protestants would be rewarded by God in heaven.

Question 7

What amendment gave women the right to vote?

Answer 7

The 19th amendment

Question 8

What is Hooverville?

Answer 8

A “Hooverville” was a shanty town built during the Great Depression by the homeless in the United States of America. They were named after Herbert Hoover, who was President of the United States of America during the onset of the Depression and was widely blamed for it. The term was coined by Charles Michelson, publicity chief of the Democratic National Committee.There were hundreds of Hoovervilles across the country during the 1930s and hundreds of thousands of people lived in these slums.

Question 9

Who was the president during the great depression?

Answer 9

Herbert Hoover - the 31st president. When Hoover took office in March 1929, he said, “I have no fears for the future of our country. It is bright with hope.” In October, the U.S. stock market crashed. Thousands of investors lost their savings. At first, Hoover believed the downturn would pass but as time went on, the situation grew worse.

Question 10

What year did John Steinbeck win a nobel prize?

Answer 10

In 1962 he won the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception.”

Question 11

Where does Steinbeck set most of his novels?

Answer 11

Most of Steinbeck’s work is set in central California, particularly in the Salinas Valley and the California Coast Ranges region where he was born.

Question 12

What are themes in many of his works?

Answer 12

His works frequently explored the themes of fate and injustice, especially as applied to downtrodden or everyman protagonists.

Question 13

Where did Steinbeck spend his childhood?

Answer 13

Steinbeck lived in a small rural town set in some of the world’s most fertile land. He spent his summers working on nearby ranches and later with migrant workers. There he learned of the harsher aspects of the migrant life and the darker side of human nature.

Question 14

How was Steinbeck affected by the Great Depression?

Answer 14

During the Great Depression, Steinbeck bought a small boat, and later claimed that he was able to live on the fish and crab that he gathered from the sea, and fresh vegetables from his garden and local farms. When those sources failed, Steinbeck and his wife accepted welfare, and on rare occasions, stole bacon from the local produce market. Whatever food they had, they shared with their friends.

Question 15

What are the interchapters in the novel?

Answer 15

Articles from the series called The Harvest Gypsies Steinbeck wrote for the San Francisco News about the plight of the migrant worker.

Question 16

What religion was Steinbeck?

Answer 16

Steinbeck was affiliated to the St. Paul’s Episcopal Church and he stayed attached throughout his life to Episcopalianism. Especially in his works of fiction, Steinbeck was highly conscious of religion and incorporated it into his style and themes. The shaping of his characters often drew on the Bible and the theology of Anglicanism, combining elements of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.

Question 17

How was the novel received?

Answer 17

it was the best-selling book of 1939 and 430,000 copies had been printed by February 1940. Steinbeck’s political views, negative portrayal of capitalism, and sympathy for the plight of workers led to a backlash against the author. Claiming the book was both obscene and misrepresented conditions in the county, the Kern County Board of Supervisors banned the book from the county’s publicly funded schools and libraries in August 1939. This ban lasted until 1941. J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI, was convinced that Steinbeck was a Communist and put him under constant surveillance.

Question 18

Where does the novels name come from?

Answer 18

Battle Hymn of the Republic is a lyric by the abolitionist writer Julia Ward Howe. The song links the judgment of the wicked at the end of the age with the American Civil War. Since that time, it has become an extremely popular and well-known American patriotic song.

Question 19

Who were the field notes for the novel taken from?

Answer 19

Steinbeck was known to have borrowed from field notes taken during 1938 by Farm Security Administration worker and author Sanora Babb. While Babb collected personal stories about the lives of the displaced migrants for a novel she was developing, her supervisor, Tom Collins, shared her reports with Steinbeck, who at the time was working for the San Francisco News.

Question 20

What did Steinbeck say his intentions were?

Answer 20

“I’ve done my damnedest to rip a reader’s nerves to rags.”

Question 21

What biblical allusions can be seen?

Answer 21

Steinbeck uses Christian imagery within The Grapes of Wrath. The largest implications lie with Tom Joad and Jim Casy, who are both interpreted as Christ-like figures. Jim Casy representing Jesus Christ in the early days of his ministry, up until his death, which is interpreted as representing the death of Christ. From there, Tom takes over, rising in Casy’s place as the Christ figure risen from the dead. Scholars also argue Ma Joad, Rose of Sharon, Rose of Sharon’s stillborn child, and Uncle John can be seen allusions to biblical figures. Ken Eckert even compared the migrants’ movement west as a reversed version of the slaves’ escape from Egypt in Exodus. California can be seen as the promised land.

Question 22

When did the stock market crash?

Answer 22

In October 1929 the U.S. stock market crashed, sending the country into an economic depression that lasted for more than a decade. Suddenly, millions of people were out of work and facing poverty. Many U.S. citizens became dissatisfied with how their government handled the crisis.

Question 23

Who was inspired by the novel?

Answer 23

After Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, read the book, she organized congressional hearings to reform labour laws for migrant camps.

Question 24

What are the figures of the migrants left homeless and that migrated to California?

Answer 24

More than 500,000 Americans were left homeless and from 1935-1940, over 250,000 people migrated to California. Roughly 2.5 million people left the Dust Bowl states—Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma—during the 1930s. It was the largest migration in American history.

Question 25

What was the dust bowl?

Answer 25

The Dust Bowl was the drought-stricken Southern Plains region of the United States, which suffered severe dust storms during a dry period in the 1930s which lasted for a decade.

Question 26

What caused the dust bowl?

Answer 26

• The Homestead Act of 1862, which provided settlers with 160 acres of public land, was followed by the Kinkaid Act of 1904 and the Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909. These acts led to a massive influx of new and inexperienced farmers across the Great Plains.
• Rising wheat prices in the 1910s and 1920s and increased demand for wheat from Europe during World War I encouraged farmers to plow up millions of acres of native grassland to plant wheat, corn and other row crops. But as the United States entered the Great Depression, wheat prices plummeted. Farmers tore up even more grassland in an attempt to harvest a bumper crop and break even.
• The weather conditions like black blizzards also didn’t improve the land’s fertility