The Grapes Of Wrath Analysis

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The novel ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ was a novel met with contempt, loathing, understanding, misunderstanding, discontempt, and in some cases anger. Overall, however, the book was widely successful and still sells thousands of copies per year. This book is full of messages that assault the reader’s perspective and outlook towards others, and challenges the reader’s idea of poverty and their awareness of it. Steinbeck’s novel was a direct representation of the troubles of the people’s he wrote about, though there are just as many who think that ‘... this book exposes nothing but the total depravity, vulgarity, and degraded mentality of the author. However, whatever the opinion one holds of the author himself it cannot be debated that this story, like all stories, has a purpose, and that is to present a theme, or a set of themes over the course of the novel. The ending of ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ means a great many things, …show more content…
This part, said to be the ‘punching point’, later called a ‘survival symbol, not a love symbol’ by Steinbeck (Wartzman) This point was when, at least to Rose of Sharon, it would have seemed as though nothing more could possibly go wrong (unless it immediately began to rain, as the slapstick stereotype would point out). She had lost her husband, her baby, her brother, and her home. Rose of Sharon had very little left, and yet, she still gave to another who was closer to losing one of the only things she had left, life. “If we only value things that are permanent then our lives are utterly worthless. We’ll all be killed by time, illness, or the sword. Would you want to die right now?” (Iwanaga) Some believe that something along the line’s of Ryotaro Iwanaga’s statement was the point of Steinbeck’s putting Rose of Sharon’s sacrifice to the starving man in his