FREE ESSAY ON DESERTS

DESERTS

To look at the novel as a whole, it is a very well-written piece, which draws out the
theme quite simply to the reader. The theme being the shift from individual thinking to
wide-spread thinking. This shift is most directly seen in the actions of Tom Joad. In the
opening of the novel, he is mainly concerned for his own welfare. He wants to make up for
all the things he missed when in prison. Later on in the novel, he is more concerned with
the welfare of the family. At the end of the novel, he has shifted to trying to do what
is best for all the migrant people by trying to organize them even though he knows this
involves him in great personal danger. 
That shift in thinking is also accompanied with the replacement of the individual family
by the world family. The thing that started the breakup of the individual family was the
loss of their land. The family had lived there for many generations and had strong ties
to the land. Getting thrown off the land was like losing their family history. The same
concern for humanity at large is seen in Ma Joad. At first, she is concerned with keeping
the family together. But, as the novel progresses, she begins to become a part of a
larger human family. As she says at the end of the novel, at first, it was the family and
now it is just anyone who needs help. Next, Grampa Joad died because he could not take
leaving his home. He is the first family member to leave. However, it would seem that, as
Peter Lisca points out, Grampa is symbolically present through the anonymous old man in
the barn (stable), who is saved from starvation by Rose of Sharon's breasts... At the
same time though, the family's joining with the Wilsons shows that the larger world
family of the migrant society is replacing the individual family. Chapter Seventeen is
one of the general chapters that shows the growth of the new migrant society that has its
own laws and leaders. At the border of California, the Joads lose Noah when he refuses to
leave the river, and the Wilsons because of Sairy's illness. Then, Granma dies on the way
across the desert. The Joads have to leave her for a pauper's burial. This exposes the
reluctance of the older generation to leave the land and their inability to start a
completely new life, whereas only the strong and young people accepted the challenge. 
Thus, with the Joads, the journey West is also a journey from personal concern to a
larger concern for all of humanity. This change is accompanied by a change also in the
Joad's economic situation. Even though the Joads' economic situation deteriorates, they
manage to enlarge their view of humanity. At the first camp in California, they don't
have enough to feed their own family, but Ma leaves a little something in the bottom of
the pot for some strange children, who have been standing around. Therefore, in the
largest view, the decline of the family and the decline of the economic situation are
accompanied by an increase in and acceptance of a larger view of humanity. All migrants
met these problems at one time or another. In an essay, Martin Staples Shockley concluded
that ...properly speaking, The Grapes of Wrath is not a regional novel; but it has
regional significance; it raises regional problems. Economic collapse, farm tenantry,
migratory labor are not regional problems; they are national or international in scope,
and can never be solved through state or regional action. Hence, these problems were
encountered by all of the migrants. However, most of the migrants managed to surpass
these difficulties and reach their goal of arriving in California. 
The ending of the novel, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck depicts an ongoing theme
throughout the novel: the transformation from the I form of thinking into the we form of
thinking that results in the formation of a culture rather than a family. As the
Twentieth-Century American Literature book declares, The more one reads The Grapes of
Wrath, the more thoroughly one knows the many ramifications of its informing theme, the
more perfect and moving seems the novel's ending. Here in this one real and symbolic act
everything is brought together. Rose of Sharon gives her milk out of biological necessity
to do so; she feeds not her own baby but an old man, a stranger...Biology, sociology,
history, and religion become one expression of the community of mankind. Rose of Sharon's
act of giving milk from her breast to a strange man is not only a psychological
transformation but angelic. Very few are the people who think of others before doing
something but in this novel, Rose of Sharon changes into thinking about humanity as a
whole rather than herself. 
Works Cited
Bloom, Harold, ed. Twentieth-Century American Literature. New York: Chelsea House
Publishers, 1987.
Draper, James P., ed. World Literature Criticism. Detroit: Pope-Stevenson, 1992.
Magill, Frank N., ed. Masterpieces of World Literature. New York: Harper and Row,
1989.
Magill, Frank N., ed. Magill's Survey of American Literature. New York: Marshall
Cavendish, 1991.
Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. United States: Viking Penguin Inc., 1939.
A
Psychological Transformation