Resumo de The Grapes Of Wrath

Steinbeck?s ?The Grapes of Wrath? deals with the effect of the Great Depression on the small farming families of the American Midwest. In a social attack on industrial farming methods and the power of big business, particularly banks, the novel follows the fortunes of the Joad family as they are forced from their home of generations and struggle west in search of work. The story of the Joads is punctuated by descriptive chapters that demonstrate the universality of what is happening to the Joads, and put their problems in context. Tom Joad, the central character, returns home from prison on parole to find his family packing up to leave Oklahoma; their crops have failed, and their debt to the banks is too big to continue farming so they have to give up their land as payment. Their savings are just enough to buy an old van with a little money left over for the journey, and everything that can be packed is loaded onto the back, the rest sold. They then join the hordes of people all slowly moving westwards to California, where there is a promise of work. However, when after weeks of hard travelling and the deaths of the two oldest members of the family, they arrive in California they find that there is very little work to be had. Due the huge numbers of workers arriving the wages paid by the huge farms has become so low working is hardly economic, and the migrants are forced to live in roadside camps, always in fear of being burnt out by the local militia groups. Towards the end of the novel Tom Joad has to go into hiding for killing a militia-man that attacked him, and eventually leaves to protect his family, vowing to himself to begin a fight for the rights of the immigrants. Meanwhile the rest of the family trails from place to place picking up bits of work, but always on the brink of starvation. The novel ends with one of the many symbolic events in the novel, a huge flood reminiscent of the story of Noah?s Ark. The remaining family members struggle through the water to a barn on a hill above the torrent, and the final message is one of hope for the future, for a new day after the flood has passed. In this, possibly Steinbeck?s most celebrated work, Steinbeck passionately criticises the absurdity in modern business to value profit above people, giving examples of mountains of food being destroyed by farms because it wasn?t economic to transport them to the towns, while all around thousands of people are starving and prevented at gunpoint from taking the unwanted produce. Through the day-to-day experiences of the Joad family sympathy with the plight of the migrant workers is aroused, whilst the more general chapters put the family into a historical and social setting.

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