Uzbekistan state university of world languages english philology faculty

The Grapes of Wrath marks an important turning point in American literature. It put Steinbeck on the map as an author, as well as a citizen was tired of seeing how horribly some people were being treated. He loved his home region, cherished every river and hill and often romanticized them in his novels. He did, however, dislike the political system which is something that becomes clear when the central characters of The Grapes of Wrath get suppressed by the corrupt Californian political system (Dickstein 117).
There are those who criticize Steinbeck for limiting his subjects regarding the Great Depression to just a certain group of individuals, but Lincoln R. Gibbs is not one of them. He states: “If we applaud the scientist for restricting his field, we should permit the novelist to select his province and have his favorite types. We should insist only that he tell us the whole truth within the limits he chooses” (177). The fact that Steinbeck would spend most of his time focusing on the lower class means that he had the opportunity to incorporate his own voice to the novel. He does this by victimizes his central characters and telling his readers about the injustice that they are faced with each day and gives details of the extreme gap between poverty and wealth and all the evils that the industrialism had brought on the factory towns (Gibbs 178). Steinbeck explains this vast difference in a simple sentence spoken by Tom Joad: “The good rich lan’ layin fallow, or maybe one fella with a million acres, while a hundred thousan’ good farmers is starvin’” (The Grapes of Wrath, 435, ch. 28).One of his biggest critics was Edmund Wilson, who branded Steinbeck as a “minor regionalist”. This prejudice was shared by many and it even went so far that The New York Times printed a lead editorial stating that Steinbeck did not deserve the Nobel Prize (Benson 73).

Background influences
The Grapes of Wrath became John Steinbeck’s most famous book, and is often cited as the novel in which he began his attacks on the social and economic changes which were occurring due to the Great Depression. Steinbeck had been touching on the subject earlier in his literary career, even if he did not take a personal stance on the matter at that time. The Great Depression was frequently a part of his novels and usually examples of it can be found by looking at his characters. The extremely harsh economic situation had created an enormous gap between the social groups. The land owners and the aristocrats were living the care-free life while the working class was forced to endure hard and painful labor jobs so they could afford to feed their families, which they could not even do because of the poor salary they were earning. When we read his novels, we quickly notice how Steinbeck purposely placed several different social groups in his different characters. We have the rich upper class citizens, the struggling migrant workers, the Negro slaves and of course the old timers who were looking down the end of their own road.
These representations are made clearest in Of Mice and Men. Even though it is not one of the major themes of the novel it is possibly one of the most recognizable features in it. We are introduced to this straight away when we meet George and Lennie. This unlikely pair can be seen as representing three different groups: the working class, the health care worker and the handicapped. As a duo their purpose in the novel is to portray the migrant workers who go from town to town in a desperate search for work. They do not have an easy life and struggle to hold down a job for a lengthy period. As a result they never have an actual place to call home. Lennie Small also represents a completely different social group on his own. Being a mentally challenged individual, Lennie is incapable of taking care of himself and must rely on George to survive. George can therefore be seen as a representation of someone working in the health care system. The connection is made by George taking on the role of Lennie’s caretaker. Steinbeck draws up a clear image of the struggling migrant workers in the novel and even though it pre dates The Grapes of Wrath by a couple of years, the details of the migrant workers do resemble his telling of what he witnessed while carrying out his research in Visalia.
It is when we look at Curly and his father that we get a glimpse of how big the gap is between the upper and lower class. While this gap still exists today the differences are not nearly as extreme. While the workers did whatever needed to be done around the farm, Curly and his father were the ones reaping all the benefits. This is how things worked and indeed still work today. The difference is that today workers have more rights and have unions to make sure that they are not being mistreated at their jobs. In the 1930s the workers did not have that; however the upper class citizens did not have to worry about those sorts of things. Those who were born into the upper class family usually had a heritance just waiting for them and never had to know the meaning of hard work. We see that shine through Curly who has never had to do any manual labor for himself. He has a beautiful wife and is living the good life while the workers are forced to fight for their survival and deal with all the work and the hard times that came with the Great Depression.
One of the more vulnerable social groups of the era gets mentioned in Of Mice and Men. Candy represents the group of individuals who are coming to the end of their usefulness. They are old or crippled, perhaps even both, and can barely work anymore. Bert Cardillo maintains that the shooting of Candy’s dog, even though it serves as a parallel to the shooting of Lennie, serves a much greater purpose in the novel. He argues that it opens Candy’s eyes to his situation (19). Candy is approaching senility and soon he will no longer be of any use around the farm. When his dog is taken out back and shot, Steinbeck is criticizing the treatment of group. The dog is too old to be of any use and must therefore be killed. It was a terrible situation, and at times, they even wished for the same fate as the old dog:
“He said miserably, “You seen what they done to my dog tonight? They say he wasn’t no good to himself and nobody else. When they can me here I wisht somebody’d shoot me. But they won’t do nothing like that. I won’t have no place to go, an’ I can’t get no more jobs…”” (Steinbeck 59).
People like Candy were the ones that had the hardest time trying to survive during the Great Depression. When they were facing starvation, extreme poverty and constant migration, it could only add to their constant pain and suffering to know that they would soon no longer be of any use and would therefore not be able to earn enough money to survive. The migrant workers were often forced to travel excruciatingly long distances, far away from their homes, and like it occurs in The Grapes of Wrath when Grandpa and Grandma Joad do not survive the journey. As a result this group of people more often than not passed away on their long journeys. Their struggles in life, as well as people’s general views on these individuals is signified in the novel not only with the previously mentioned fate of Candy’s dog but also from the fact that Candy comes off as being on the same mental level as Lennie. He even starts to sound like Lennie when he is telling Crooks about the land which the three men plan to buy together. In fact, Candy is the only one in the novel who seems to be on the same mental level as Lennie (Cardullo 20).
Steinbeck includes these social groups so there is a character which everyone can relate to. He can, therefore, use his novels to criticize the political system of California and declare his distrust for the people in charge. He can also take the opportunity to inspire his American readers, and let them know that changes need to be made because the progress the country was making was not going in the right direction. They deserved more than what they were getting. Ethan Hawley’s role was to show people how things in the world truly worked, and to show that it was not impossible to make a difference in the community. All they had to do was to keep at it and not give up on themselves.