The unusual structure of Steinbeck's overbold The Grapes of Wrath is useful in helping the password gift social themes which affect the lives of both individuals and the society as a whole. The structure is criticized by some because it distracts from the story by jump chapters on the specific (the story of the Joads) and the general (the suffering of wretched workers). These criticisms ar reasonable, but they ignore the fact that the book should be taken at face value, that an author of Steinbeck's skill knew what he was doing and intended the structure to be just as it is. He deliberately seeks to interrupt the straightforward narrative flow with much direct statements about the suffering of the migrants and the forces, institutions and groups which cause that suffering. Pizer argues that these disparate chapters are unified by the "authorial emotion of anger" and by the cyclic structure moving toward the hope of the end of the book (Pizer 95).
On one level, the structure is simple and chronological, following the cast aside of the Joads through the suffering the drought brought, through the hard go west, through dashed hopes, through the struggle for survival and dignity.
The tonic focuses on the migrants' dispossession, as if the country, its government and institutions, were unwilling and/or incapable(p) of dealing
The reader sees the Joads' growth and fortitude in all its specifics, and then, as in Chapter 17, the larger fork over is provided in which all such migrants are seen as bureau of a greater social movement, as "lonely and perplexed," in "sadness and worry and defeat" (Steinbeck 193).
Pizer, Donald. "The Enduring Power of the Joads." magic Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Harold Bloom, ed. New York: Chelsea House, 1988. 83-98.
Levant, Harold. "The Fully Matured Art." John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Harold Bloom, ed. New York: Chelsea House, 1988. 17-44.
The confused structure is the weakest point [of the book] --the story breaks in half, the nonorganic, editorializing interchapters force honorary general conclusions, and the ending is inconclusive as well as overwrought and sentimental (Levant 17).
Bridgwater, William, ed. The Columbia-Viking Desk Encyclopedia. New York: Viking, 1960.
Still, The Grapes of Wrath is indeed unusual in terms of the stark alternation of chapters. As Smith writes,
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