The first 11 chapters of John Steinbeck's (1902-68) The Grapes of Wrath (1939) take place in the dust bowl, where a family of tenant farmers, the Joads, prepares to join the thousands like them and seek a new life in California. In Oklahoma, tenant farmers like the Joads have been evicted from their farms by banks and land companies. The land is arid, left parched by the drought, the relentless sun, and the winds that have sprinkled the shriveled crops with dust. To this scene Tom Joad returns from four years in prison and joins his family in preparation for the trip west. Tom's mother, Ma Joad, is a stoic, courageous matriarch, who serves as the moral center of the family and the novel. The trip itself is a painfully slow and dogged test of endurance and patience, but the family eventually arrives in California.

Once there, they discover that the promised land is not what they had hoped. Efforts to exploit the migrant workers lead to violence that is only alleviated when the family moves to a government camp. At the camp, the family learns the value of collective social action, but the lack of work in the area forces them to continue their trip, bringing Tom into contact with striking workers. When the strikers are attacked by thugs, hired by the landowners, Tom kills a man and is forced to separate from the family, vowing to continue the fight for working people. His indomitable mother also promises to continue the struggle, asserting, "They ain't gonna wipe us out. Why, we're the people--we go on."

Published in 1939, The Grapes of Wrath became an international bestseller, translated into many languages and adapted, in the following year, into a prize-winning film directed by John Ford. Its success propelled John Steinbeck into the front rank of American novelists. In the ensuing years, the novel has been attacked as being mawkishly sentimental and thinly disguised propaganda. Nevertheless, The Grapes of Wrath continues to enjoy a wide popular audience, a fact that suggests that it has captured an American, if not universal, spirit. More than 60 years later, the simple dignity of the Okies justifiesMa Joad's optimism.

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