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

The Grapes of rage No One Man, But One Common Soul legion(predicate) writers in American literature try to instill the philosophyof their choosing into their reader. This is oftentimes a philosophy derived atfrom their proclaim personal experiences. John Steinbeck is no exception tothis. When traveling through his native Californian in the mid-1930s,Steinbeck witnessed population living in appalling conditions of extremepoverty due to the big(p) Depression and the agricultural disaster known asthe Dust Bowl. He noniced that these people received no aid whatsoeverfrom incomplete the state of California nor the federal government. The ragehe experienced from visual perception such treatment fueled his novel The Grapes ofWrath. Steinbeck sought to change the execr subject 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 (Cri tical 1). Steinbeck showsin The Grapes of Wrath that there is no one man, only when one parking area soul inwhich we all belong 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 terminal levels (Holman 20). This biological hear of mancreates techniques and aspects of form capable of conveying this image ofman with esthetic power and conviction the power to overcome asperitythrough collectiveness, or in this case, as one combined soul(Curley 224). Steinbecks grassroots purpose of the novel is essentially religious,but not in whatsoever orthodox sense of the word. He is religious in that heconte mplates mans coincidence to the cosmos and attempts to transcendscientific explanations based on sense experience. He is also religious inthat he explicitly attests the holiness of temperament (Curley 220). A commonfear during the nineteenth century was one of this realness leading tothe end of reverence, worship, and sentiment. Steinbeck, however, is thefirst significant author to build his own set of beliefs, which some wouldrefer to as a religion, upon a representational 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