The Grapes of Wrath, I think, is the kind of book that should teach you some important life lessons about true moral values, about family, about learning to appreciate what life gives you, instead of always envying others for what they have. It’s a book I would give my children to read so they understand what should really matter for them.

The Grapes of Wrath is an American realist novel written by John Steinbeck and published in 1939. The book won the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and it was cited prominently when Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962.

Set during the Great Depression, the novel focuses on the Joads, a poor family of tenant farmers driven from their Oklahoma home by drought, economic hardship, agricultural industry changes and bank foreclosures forcing tenant farmers out of work. Due to their nearly hopeless situation, and in part because they are trapped in the Dust Bowl, the Joads set out for California. Along with thousands of other “Okies”, they sought jobs, land, dignity, and a future.

Their journey is long and full of difficult situations, the family has to go through harsh conditions and although they keep being optimistic and whiling to work to earn their living, the end doesn’t look very promising. Their high hope makes you, as a reader, also hope that everything will work for the best and that, in the end, they will manage to settle in California and have a decent life, but the writer leaves the ending open… they are in the same situation as when they left home, poor but still together.

The Grapes of Wrath is also a very good history lesson about the American Great Depression, when part of the country was found in poverty and when the ones having the power tried to have even more power and ignore everything that had to do with humanity and kindness.