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The Mother Road
John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath
In the late 1930's, the San Francisco News hired a young
novelist, John Steinbeck, to write a series of articles about the migrant
workers who had left the dust bowls of the southern plans to look for a better
life in California.
Steinbeck's newly published Tortilla Flat, a series of humorous stories about Monterey
paisanos, was
already receiving national acclaim. He wrote a seven-part series which he
called "The Harvest Gypsies. But while researching that series, the
people themselves captured his imagination and those articles became the
foundation of what is considered by many to be his greatest work--The Grapes
of Wrath, published in 1939.
This was followed by a series of successful novels, the
last being Travels with Charley, a travelogue published in
1962 in which Steinbeck wrote about his impressions during a three-month
tour in a truck that led him through forty American states. He was awarded
the Nobel Peace Prize in Literature in 1962. He died in New York City in
1968.
Grapes of Wrath was described during the Nobel
Peace Prize presentation as "the great work that is principally associated
with Steinbeck's name, the epic chronicle The Grapes of Wrath (1939).
This is the story of the emigration to California which was forced upon a group
of people from Oklahoma through unemployment and abuse of power. This tragic
episode in the social history of the United States inspired in Steinbeck a
poignant description of the experiences of one particular farmer and his family
during their endless, heartbreaking journey to a new home."
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