Grapes of Wrath- California

In the novel Grapes of Wrath, many families are going through a lot of suffering in order to get a better life. The one thing that gives many families the hope they need to make it is this: California. All of the families that were forced out of their homes had a choice to make, either stay behind and starve to death or travel and try to find work. In this case, the Joad family decides to travel to California in search of jobs and a better life. I think that many of the families that chose to leave their homes behind saw California as a promise of a better life for them. Many of the families did not even know if there would still be jobs left in California, but it was the only thing they had hope for. I think that the author did a really good job with involving history because I think that if you know the events happened in real life it makes the book so much more realistic. By reading this book people can get a better understanding of what people went through back then. For many families such as the Joad's, California was their only hope. The journey there was hard, but it was what they had to do in order to survive. For many of these families, California represented a fresh start and a new beginning. These people packed up and left everything behind in order to survive, and to them making it to California was the priority. California to many was the only thing they had because they had to leave everything behind and that was the only thing they could look forward to. I know that if I had to leave everything I had ever known behind I would have nothing to look forward to except my next destination. I think that California was a really important part of this book because of the role it played in the lives of many families.

Bibliography

Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Penguin, 2002. Print.