There is an audio guide, a cast of characters, a reader's guide, a teacher's guide. The Big Read is a great site, featuring some wonderful books, including The Grapes of Wrath. The NEA presents The Big Read in partnership with Arts Midwest. The Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts, designed to revitalize the role of reading in American culture by exposing citizens to great works of literature and encouraging them to read for pleasure and enrichment. It speaks from assumptions common to most Americans whether their ancestors came over on the Mayflower, in steerage, or in a truck. Written in a style of peculiarly democratic majesty, The Grapes of Wrath evokes quintessentially American themes of hard work, self-determination, and reasoned dissent. Capturing the plight of millions of Americans whose lives had been crushed by the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, Steinbeck awakened the nation's comprehension and compassion. It is also a significant event in our national history. John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath is not merely a great American novel. ' He famously said, 'I've done my damndest to rip a reader's nerves to rags,' and this work won a large following among the working class due to Steinbeck's sympathy to the workers' movement and his accessible prose style.

When preparing to write the novel, Steinbeck wrote: 'I want to put a tag of shame on the greedy bastards who are responsible for this.

WikipediaĬharacters: Tom Joad, Casy, Ma Joad, Pa Joad, Uncle John JoadĪdaptations: The Grapes of Wrath (1940), The Grapes of WrathĪwards: Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, National Book Award for Fiction The book won the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and it was cited prominently when Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize in 1962. The Grapes of Wrath is an American realist novel written by John Steinbeck and published in 1939.

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