This is my A* level essay, written for the academic exam year of 2021, about the forces that combined to drive the Jodes to migrate across southern central America during the 1930s. Refers to context of the Dust Bowl, mechanisation of farming, and more.
Explore the features of American life in the 1930s that combine to force the Joad
family to leave Oklahoma to go west to California. What do you think Steinbeck is
saying about the American Dream?
In John Steinbeck’s ‘The Grapes of Wrath’, the migrant experience from the Dust Bowl to
California is recorded in what he aimed to be “a mean, nasty book” designed to “put a tag of
shame on the greedy bastards who are responsible for this.” Through the Joad family and their
leaving of Oklahoma, he presents the features of the American life of the poor and the farmers
as they were driven from their land during the Great Depression by the mechanisation of
agricultural technology, the great drought and the Dust Bowl that devastated almost all
hand-grown crops, and the corporate greed of the people that created the “monster” of the
banks and companies that were soon out of their own control and taking over all farming land.
Thus the Joads had no choice but to leave Oklahoma and instead went west to California in
order to achieve a better working life.
To begin with, the greatest force outside of any person’s control that drove families like
the Joads from Okhlahoma to go west to California is the weather. Oklahoma is located in the
region of the Dust Bowl that spanned the plains across southern central America where drought
impacted detrimentally upon agricultural progress during the 1930s when ‘the Grapes of Wrath’
is set. Steinbeck begins the novel with descriptions of the weather against the crops, where the
“rain heads dropped a little splattering and then hurried on to some other country” and this
drought caused the thin layer of dried earth that, once broken, causes the severe dust storms
that plagued this region. This dust is responsible for killing off crops and livestock, burying
homes, and wreaking havoc on the agriculture industry. Steinbeck shows even that nature
cannot fight this, as the personified “corn fought the wind with its weakened leaves” and yet
cannot resist it, all corn set “wearily sideways in the direction of the wind.” This could be
interpreted to represent the impact of the weather on the working class of farmers in the area,
this dangerous foreshadowing of the events ahead supported through the threatening imagery
of the “sun was as red as ripe new blood” suggesting death ahead in the novel. This drought as
well as the heat, the lack of rainfall, and the Dust Bowl leaves families like the Joads who
depend on crops for their livelihood completely helpless. In Willa Cather’s ‘My Antonia’ the
Shimerdas are shown to be at a similar disadvantage with farming their land. Mr Shimerdas is
described to have paid “more than it was worth” for the farm and he “knew nothing about
farming.” Through the perspective of Jim the land is observed to be “of little value for farming”
and this naivety of the immigrant Shimerdas family has left them open to such exploitation. They
only have a “cave” to spend the harsh Nebraskan winter in and were sold “oxen and two bony
old horses for the price of good work-teams” because of their ignorance. Here, the harshness of
the prairie land for farming on and the difficulty of the coming winter cause great detriment to the
family, which most likely would have killed them, had it not been for the help of the Burden
family. The Joads, however, have no help and thus are defenseless. Their economic instability is
even more dangerous duing the 1930’s Great Depression, which was the result of the Wallstreet
Crash of October 1929, the worst economic downturn in the industrialised world. This
vulnerability consequently combines with other forces to drive the Joads from their home and to
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