Resumo de Grapes Of Wrath

Everyone has dreams. Everyone has hopes and ambitions, plans for the future. How many people can truly say that their dreams have come true? For the Joad family, their dreams have been deferred, postponed and even forgotten. John Steinbeckk's classic novel, The Grapes of Wrath gives us a chance to glimpse into the lives of a Depression era family who struggle against social, economic and moral evils in order to survive. Their story is a microcosm of America in the grips of the Great Depression. In a social context, the Joad family are outcasts. They are poor and uneducated, probably two generations removed from being immigrants. All they know how to do is work with their hands. And in the eyes of the power structure: the landowners, the banks and the corporations, the Joads were expendable. That seemed to be the tone of the nation also, for during the Depression era, everyone was trying to survive. And the closer you were to the bottom the less chance you had to make it. There was prejudice against certain individuals then as there is now. On an economic level, the nation was in one of the darkest times in her history. The stock market had crashed, big business had failed, massive layoffs left millions unemployed and the general mood of the nation was bleak and desolate. In the 1930's Oklahoma Dust Bowl, the mood was equally somber. A series of droughts had left the land bone dry, resulting in a loss of crops. The land was no longer productive. So families were forced to vacate the land and look for better conditions elsewhere. Even if they had wanted to stay on the land, the power structure would not let them. They were given eviction notices by the landowners who were influenced by the banking system, who were regulated by the corporations in New York, Boston and Washington. When the land failed to produce, the farms became a liability. The bottom line was, and is, money. How many families, like the
Joads, had their dreams deferred? How many families lost everything they had in life? When the farming community collapsed, it affected the technology of America as well as the economy. In the ten years that spanned the Great Depression Americans had to redefine themselves. Farmers, once rooted in the fertile soil of America, became migrant workers, contracting themselves out for a pittance. Once proud laborers found themselves on soup lines, many who had been major players in huge corporations found themselves broke and homeless, forced to work at ridiculously low wages to support their families. For those campaigning for better wages, strikes were the norm. There were also union busters, reinforced by hired security, such as the Pinkertons. There were labor camps that centered around the company store, coupled with almost nonexistent wages, that managed to keep the working poor, poorer. There was such a dark and bleak atmosphere covering America that one wondered if things would ever get better. But America had a survivor spirit, because somewhere deep down inside, America had a moral conscience.. It seems that no matter what painful, devastating circumstances we encounter, we always manage to recover. Our creed has always been about the fight for the little man and his struggle for human rights. We obtained that conscience from the individuals who built this country. So with the survivor mentality, Depression era Americans took the attitude that they were The People. They couldn't be beaten or eliiminated because they were The People. With the survivor spirit that marked America as unique, The People survived the Great Depression.

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