by Jane Ward

Created on: August 29, 2008

John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath succeeds on two levels. It does a beautiful job a depicting a tragic and often forgotten chapter in America's history. It also has a more universal theme, reminding us what happens when a faceless system preys upon the uneducated. The members of the Joad family do the best with what they have to keep their family together, but circunstances ultimately get the better of them.

Tom Joad is the firstborn of the Joad family and the novel begins with him. Steinbeck uses him as a tool to acclimate the reader into the situation of the dust bowl. At the start of the novel, Tom has just been released from prison and is trying to find his way home. Daydreaming of the delicious dinner awaiting him at his family's home, he has no idea that he is in for an unpleasant surprise. When he catches up with his family they are preparing to go west to be migrant workers, as they have been forced off their land by debts they can't pay due to the dustbowl and its adverse effect on the land. If there is a protagonist in this story, it is Tom, because we first see the Dust Bowl through his eyes, and it is his journey we follow. Tom is an uncommon protagonist, however, in that we leave him before the story ends. Tom gets in a fight with a police officer and is forced into hiding. His family goes along without him. Throughout the story we have been dropping characters; both grandparents die, Tom's sister's young husband leaves her, the minister who has been travelling with the family decides to go his own way. The Joad family is like a snowball in reverse, each lost character contributing to the chaos and the decline of the family ties.
To the reader it feels like the last straw when Tom drifts out of the story. After his departure the chaos spirals out of control, the family having worse and worse luck until the eventual ending, which does not come with a bang as may have been expected, but with a flat, running-out-of-gas sound. The Joad family's story is not over, it has simply gotten too painful to tell.
Ma Joad is an interesting character because, in a way, she is not directly affected by the tragedy that has befallen America. Her role has always been the traditional role of women in society; caring for the children, preparing food and clothing, domestic chores that have little to do with how the men folk make their money. Ma is frustrated by the economic situation of the country because her job has not technically been taken away in the way

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