Agrarianism and Land Ethic: A Study of Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath
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Abstract
A discussion of the agrarianism in The Grapes of Wrath does not pretend to serve as an interpretation of the entire novel. Nevertheless, it is the researcher’s conviction that this doctrine is no less important than the other ideologies with what was apparently one of the primary motives for writing the book, the desire to protest against the harsh inequities of the financial industrial system that had brought chaos to America in the thirties. At this Steinbeck, with his curious combination of humanism and mysticism, seems to propose the substitution of agrarianism for industrialism as an antidote for what ailed the country. In this paper, researcher aims at highlighting the agrarian sensibility of john Steinbeck. How the author expressed his concern for the farmers and for land in America in 1930s. During the disastrous thirties there were others who saw flaws in our economic system and had a similar solution. This period was also the growth of the back to the farm movement. The researcher here does not think that Steinbeck was influenced by the southerners or anyone else, but only that in this period of crumbling faiths many men turned to agrarianism as others turned to the Townsend Plan. Naturally, the men in the agrarian group had much in common, and certainly all of them drew upon Jeffersonian agrarianism.
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