Religion In John Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath

John Ernst Steinbeck Jr wrote the novel The Grapes of Wrath which was a realistic novel based on trouble and hardships during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. The novel set during the Great Depression; the novel focuses on the Joads a low-income family of tenant farmers who was forced from their home in Oklahoma by drought economic hardship, technical changes, and the bank forecloses. The novel does not only show the trouble of the Great Depression, but it makes a connection which helps the audience understand Steinbeck's views on life. The novel and the speech helps us understand Steinbeck's view on the mistreatment of humanity to each other, selfishness, and religion.

Steinbeck expressed his opinion on religion through the characters and throughout the novel. Jim Casey best expresses Steinbeck's unique view on religion. Jim Casy

In Steinbeck’s Nobel Speech he states “...we assume lordship over life or death of the world - of all living things”. These means that humanity is responsible for the world's success and failure. In Steinbeck's brief history of California in Chapter 19, Steinbeck depicts the state as the result of land-hungry squatters who stole the land from the Mexicans and cultivated it also their own. Now, generations later, California landowners see these historical examples as a threat, since they believe the inundation of migrant farmers might cause history to repeat. The landowner protected themselves by the creating a system in which migrant workers are treated like animals, travel from one roadside camp to the next, denied livable wages, and forced to turn against their brethren to survive. The novel draws a line through the population; one divides the rich. From the poor and identifies the divisions as the primary source of evil and suffering in the world against their brethren to