The Grapes of Wrath: No One Man, But One Common Soul :: Grapes Wrath essays

The Grapes of Wrath No One Man, But One Common Soul Many writers in American literature try to instill the doctrineof their choosing into their reader. This is often a philosophy derived atfrom their own personal experiences. John Steinbeck is no exception tothis. When traveling through his native Californian in the mid-1930s,Steinbeck witnessed good deal living in appalling conditions of extremepoverty due to the Great Depression and the agricultural disaster known asthe Dust Bowl. He detect that these people received no aid whatsoeverfrom neither the state of California nor the federal government. The ragehe experienced from seeing such preaching fueled his novel The Grapes ofWrath. Steinbeck sought to change the poor plight of these farmerswho had migrated from the midwest to California. Also, and moreimportantly, he wanted to suggest a philosophy into the reader, and insurethat this suffering would never occur again (Critical 1). Steinbeck showsin The Grapes of Wrath that the re is no one man, but one common somebody inwhich we all blend to. The subject of Steinbecks fiction is not the most thoughtful,imaginative, and constructive aspects of humanity, but rather the processof life itself (Wilson 785). Steinbeck has been compared to a twentiethcentury Charles Dickens of California a social critic with more sentimentthan science or system. His writing is warm, human, inconsistent,occasionally angry, but more often delighted with the joys associated withhuman life on its lowest levels (Holman 20). This biological image of mancreates techniques and aspects of form capable of conveying this image ofman with esthetic power and conviction the power to overcome distressthrough collectiveness, or in this case, as one combined soul(Curley 224). Steinbecks basic purpose of the novel is essentially unearthly,but not in any Jewish-Orthodox sense of the word. He is religious in that hecontemplates mans relation to the cosmos and attempts to transcendscientific exp lanations based on sense experience. He is also religious inthat he explicitly attests the holiness of nature (Curley 220). A commonfear during the nineteenth century was one of this naturalism leading tothe end of reverence, worship, and sentiment. Steinbeck, however, is the world-class significant author to build his own set of beliefs, which some wouldrefer to as a religion, upon a naturalistic basis. Because of his religious style on a naturalistic basis, he is able to relate man with anatural soul that they own, and combine them into a grouping of a larger,more important soul (220). America and American literature was founded on the spirit of