John Steinbeck wrote in his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath: “And then the dispossessed were drawn west- from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out. Carloads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless – restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do – to lift, to push, to pull, to …showed first 75 words of 1116 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1116 total…time to live in. He wrote this story to perhaps show the cold hard facts of life and that these were desperate times. Steinbeck did not close the novel on a happy note, because for the most part, families in this time did not ever make it to their dream. He wrote this story to give a reader a better understanding of this time and in my opinion, Steinbeck was very successful in doing so.