Tragedy Of The Grapes

Steinbeck is a famous prolific American novelist, playwright and essayist in the 20th century with The Grapes of Wrath as his masterpiece. This novel tells us a miserable story about the migrant workers during the Great Depression in 1930s in America, revealing the situation of American farmers struggling on the edge of survival and resisting in vain at that time.The author of this thesis tries to study the novel from the perspective of naturalism, and analyze the theme of this great work, that is, determined by heredity and environment, human beings cannot control their fate, but have to obey "survival of the fittest", the Law of Jungle, and all the resistance or struggle will be futile. This thesis analyzes the determination of natural and social forces, writing characteristics of naturalistic novels Steinbeck employs in the novel and the unique connotations of American naturalism. This thesis is intended to interpret naturalism embodied in The Grapes of Wrath and divided into three parts:introduction, main body and conclusion, with four chapters in the main body.The first part is an introduction to John Steinbeck and the literature review on The Grapes of Wrath.Chapter One presents the origin of naturalism, its development in America, and its representations in Steinbeck's works.Chapter Two demonstrates the determination of natural forces such as drought, dust bowl, and flood and social forces such as unemployment, discrimination, and depression reflected in The Grapes of Wrath according to the core philosophy of naturalism---determinism.Chapter Three explains the writing characteristics of naturalism employed by Steinbeck in the novel, such as describing the lower class people, pursuing total objectivity, orientating survival subject, and the pessimistic outlook.Chapter Four analyzes the unique connotations of American naturalism reflected in The Grapes of Wrath, such as the migrants'survival dream in the plight, goodness of American lower class people, and the tragedy of the grapes which is a symbol of the migrants. In the last part, the conclusion of the whole thesis is drawn:The Grapes of Wrath can be categorized as a great naturalistic novel.The story told in this novel is a great tragedy with the characters suffering from pain in both body and mind. They ever have had a land dream and a family dream, and struggled against the cruel reality, but cannot change their fate. Steinbeck reveals truly the hopeless situation of the migrant workers in the period of 1930s Great Depression, endowing The Grapes of Wrath magnificent naturalistic connotation.