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The Grapes of Wrath

by John Steinbeck · 1939

Cover of The Grapes of Wrath
Popularity 1,340

Steinbeck’s classic novel of the Great Depression is as vivid now as ever. The story focuses on a family of Oklahoma sharecroppers, farmers who work another man’s land for a share of the crops. Driven from their home by drought and poverty they take to the road in a battered old truck and make their way to California to look for work. When they arrive they find hundreds of others like them being forced to work for breadline wages. they begin working as fruit pickers, strike-breakers replacing the people who have been trying to establish a union but their consciences force them to leave.

Labor campsDepressionsLabor camps in literatureClassic LiteratureOpen Library Staff PicksPulitzer Prize WinnerFictionMigrant agricultural laborers in literatureaward:pulitzer_prize=1940open_syllabus_projectaward:pulitzer_prize=fictionCalifornia