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The Grapes Of Wrath: No One Man, But One Common Soul - Online Term Paper

The Grapes Of Wrath: No One Man, But One Common Soul



Many writers in American literature try to instill the philosophy
of their choosing into their reader. This is often a philosophy derived at
from their own personal experiences. John Steinbeck is no exception to
this. When traveling through his native Californian in the mid-1930s,
Steinbeck witnessed people living in appalling conditions of extreme
poverty due to the Great Depression and the agricultural disaster known as
the Dust Bowl. He noticed that these people received no aid whatsoever
from neither the state of California nor the federal government. The rage
he experienced from seeing such treatment fueled his novel The Grapes of
Wrath. Steinbeck sought to change the suffering ...

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Steinbeck has been compared to a twentieth
century Charles Dickens of California; a social critic with more sentiment
than science or system. His writing is warm, human, inconsistent,
occasionally angry, but more often delighted with the joys associated with
human life on its lowest levels (Holman 20). This biological image of man
creates techniques and aspects of form capable of conveying this image of
man with esthetic power and conviction; the power to overcome adversity
through collectiveness, or in this case, as one combined soul(Curley 224).
Steinbeck's basic purpose of the novel is essentially religious,
but not in any orthodox sense of the word. He is religious in that he
contemplates man's relation to the cosmos and attempts to transcend
scientific explanations based on sense experience. He is also religious in
that he explicitly attests the holiness of nature (Curley 220). A common
fear during the nineteenth century was one of this naturalism leading to
the end of ...

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also promotes humanism in the novel as a way of
expressing the idea of an oversoul. The end of the novel defeats the
accusation that the Okies are animals with no human characteristics at all.
The characters of Uncle John and Pa help to build a dam to prevent the
rising waters from entering the boxcar that they are living in. Steinbeck
shows this image as a common goal among the combined souls of the two men
to survive and the humanity of man, in midst of great inhumanity and
indifference (Critical 5).
Unanism, another one of Steinbeck's beliefs, is also evident
throughout the novel. Steinbeck's unanism was derived from his friend, the
biologist, Edward Ricketts. ...

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The Grapes Of Wrath: No One Man, But One Common Soul. (2005, May 31). Retrieved December 23, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Grapes-Wrath-No-One-Man-But/27771
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"The Grapes Of Wrath: No One Man, But One Common Soul." Essayworld.com. May 31, 2005. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Grapes-Wrath-No-One-Man-But/27771.
"The Grapes Of Wrath: No One Man, But One Common Soul." Essayworld.com. May 31, 2005. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Grapes-Wrath-No-One-Man-But/27771.
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PAPER DETAILS
Added: 5/31/2005 08:42:43 AM
Category: Book Reports
Type: Premium Paper
Words: 2337
Pages: 9

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