In John Ford's film The Grapes of Wrath, the audience travels along with an Oklahoma family that has set out to find wealth and privileges in California during the Great Depression. The film was taken from John Steinbeck's classic novel The Grapes of Wrath. The filmakers intentions in putting this novel to screen was to show how the impact of the Great Depression effected the families of that time.
             The film was taped in a journalistic, documentary-style black and white texture which helped create a strong feeling of poverty and realism to the audience. The filmakers did a good job at recreating scenery to make the plot as real as possible. The use of actual dialect of the Okies, was helpful to make the dialogue as realistic as possible. Throughout the movie the family's clothing, possessions and even the car added to the effect that Steinbeck had created when he wrote his novel long ago.
             As the movie progresses, there is actually two stories, one of the individual journey of the Joad family, and one for telling the general plight of the migrants. The director shows the individual family to show that the migrants are really people and to bring their plight home to the audience. The general story is told to show how it is affecting large numbers of people.
             Throughout the movie, we watch the Joads progress from a concern only for themselves and their own personal welfare to a concern for all the people in the world. This shift from individual thinking to wide spread thinking is most directly seen in the actions of Tom Joad. When we first see him at the beginning of the film he is mainly concerned for his own welfare. He wants to make up for all the things he missed when in prison. Later on in the film he is more concerned with the welfare of the family. When we last see him he has shifted to trying to do what is best for all the migrant people by trying to organize them into striking. He tells his
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