Ready Reference Treatise: The Grapes of Wrath

By Raja Sharma

The Joads do not lose their dignity and they continue to possess the kindness which is so precious to them.

Finally, when Rose of Sharon delivers an unborn baby, she has milk in her breasts. She suckles a starving man and saves his life. Can there be any bigger example of generosity than a mother who has just lost her new born baby and who is suckling a starving man to save his life?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raja Sharma
• Release date: Nov 5, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301202935

Raja Sharma

Raja Sharma is a retired college lecturer.He has taught English Literature to University students for more than two decades.His students are scattered all over the world, and it is noticeable that he is in contact with more than ninety thousand of his students.

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Ready Reference Treatise: The Grapes of Wrath

Raja Sharma

Copyright@2012 Raja Sharma

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved

Chapter One: Preface

Guide books or book notes are primarily written to make students understand the original text better, especially from all those angles which are often overlooked by a casual reader.

But, in the recent years it has been noticed that a very large majority of the students, without reading the original texts, rely on the guide books or notes prepared by their teachers or others. This is definitely not a healthy habit because students do pass their exams with the help of such notes; they miss so many things which haunt them in their later lives.

I would strongly advise all students to read the original text once again even if you have already read it, after reading this short treatise. You will see that the same story, after reading this treatise, will begin to give many new meanings to you.

All the best.

Raja Sharma

Chapter Two: About John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck’s contribution to the American literature is highly commendable. He was born on 27th February, 1902, in Salinas, California.

For a short while Steinbeck lived in New York. He had joined Stanford University but he did not graduate from there. He spent most of his life in California.

In 1929, Steinbeck started writing novels. He continued to struggle for about six years. Finally, he achieved commercial and critical success in 1935 when his novel Tortilla Flat was published.

Most of the writings by Steinbeck deal with the lives of the impoverished class of the society. He describes the lives of society’s most downtrodden citizens to the minutest details in his writings.

In the late 1930s he published three novels which were based on the lives of migrant workers in California. The three novels were In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men, and The Grapes of Wrath. They were published in 1936, 1937, and 1939 respectively.

The Grapes of Wrath is considered as a masterpiece written by Steinbeck.

Some parts of southern Great Plains like western Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle suffered a very severe drought in the early 1930s. The crops failed and the conditions were very harsh for the people living there. The farmers in those areas have over cultivated the land in the years after the