a prophetic tale.

when writing The Grapes of Wrath Steinbeck could not have invisiged that the tale of Tom Joad trapsing across America would be, albeit to a lesser extent, a familiar story in todays society.

Steinbeck reverts the classic rags - riches story to a tale about loss and suffering. Tom and his family are evicted from their farm and decide to trapse across the harsh wilderness of the south west along highway 66 to seek a better life in California. but to their dismay find that conditions aren't as they thought and there is just as much unemployment in California as in Oklahoma.

In Grapes of wrath steinbeck had no qualms of blaming "banks" the "state" and the "copmany" for the wide spread depression and unemployment. Unemployment in 1933 was as high as 25% and a year before publication of the novel unemployment was around 19%. The novel has a very hard and angry edge and was written to provoke a response from it's readership. The novel has become a classic due to it's timelessness, it speeks to its reader's no matter what century or cultural period.

This explains my comment earlier in the piece about The Grapes of Wrath being a prohpetic novel. Speeking about the harsh realities of the Great Depression including both econonmical and environmental tradgedies is not only addressing the populace during the 1920s ut also us, in the 21st century.

It is appropriate to think of The Grapes of Wrath as our modern day narrative. The whole world squeezed by monetary recession caused by greed and economic impropriety and commercial self importance. People around the world are migrating from one type of oppression or another, the gap between the classes is overwhelming and financial failure splits homes causing dispossession and repossession this is all symbolised by the ‘Hoovervilles’ in the surrounding areas of major cities and Tom Joad's story.