Migration In John Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath

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The Joad’s of John Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath” is a family that traveled from Oklahoma to California in search of employment. In the assigned excerpt, being the last 3 chapters, they started working on a cotton field. During this time, they are also living in boxcars with another family named the Wainwrights. Both of these families are struggling to come up with the money and means to survive, turning to the point of desperate and fearful when the flood hits. One of the characters from the Joad’s family, at this time, goes into labor. However, tragedy strikes when the baby is stillborn. Afterwards is when the flood begins to take over their boxcar, causing them to leave and search for other means of shelter. During this migration, two …show more content…
One of the more obvious ways of him doing this is the use of vernacular. How the characters, even the third person narrator, speak with accents, slur of words, and slang so explicitly in the writing makes these people more life-like. Another example of Steinbeck’s technique is how he ended the story. Usually a story has a happy, definite end; there is no more to be told. However, in “Grapes of Wrath” we are left with Ma and Rose of Sharon stumbling upon this starving boy and decide to lend him a helping hand. The reader is left wondering if the boy survives, if the family find another home, another job; the reader has no idea what later happens to these characters. It is not a definite or happy ending, much like how real life is. The only definite end that we have in our lives is death and who is to say that is the end? After we, ourselves, leave this world there is the story of our children, our grandchildren, and our great-grandchildren. As far as the story of mankind goes, there seems to be no definite end, let alone a happy one. But, there is one specific way in which Steinbeck makes his story seem authentic and that is his research. Steinbeck actually went out and met with real life people that share some of the same experiences as the Joads, their hardship and their struggle to survive during the trying years of the Great Depression. Steinbeck’s experience from living with these migrants
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