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

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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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