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Symbolism In John Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath

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John Steinbeck’s novel, The Grapes of Wrath, illuminates the despairing and depressing conditions the American farm families in Oklahoma had to go through during the Dust Bowl era from late 1920’s to early 1930’s. The novel depicts Steinbeck’s fanaticism of the land, hatred towards the corporeality, and his belief that people can survive the cruel influence of their surroundings. Steinbeck accomplishes the following by illustrating the life of the Joad as well as by using various types of symbolisms throughout his novel. According to Oxford Dictionaries, “a symbol is a thing that represents or stands for something else, especially a material object representing something abstract.” The three symbols in Steinbeck’s novel include the dust, the

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