To achieve an even greater sense of understanding for their novels, many writers parallel their stories to the Bible. The Grapes of Wrath, which sums up the despair and hardships of the early 1930s for many Americans, follows this form as well. The Grapes of Wrath is the story of one family's hardship during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. The Joad's were a hard-working family with a strong sense of togetherness; they farmed their land and went about their business without bothering anyone. But during the Great Depression, when a widespread drought hit the region where they lived, they were forced to sell the land they had farmed for generations.
             Author John Steinbeck begins the novel with a "prodigal son" type return of one of the Joad's. The oldest son, Tom, had been in jail for the past four years and is paroled. When he returns, he finds his childhood home abandoned. He learns his family has moved in with his Uncle John and he decides to travel to see them. He arrives only to learn they are packing up their belongings and moving to California, someplace where there is a promise of work and food. This sets the Joad family off on a long and arduous journey with one goal: to survive. In this novel, Steinbeck set forth with the intention of raising awareness to the general public of the difficulties and injustices these migrants faced during this period in American History. It exposed the methods of the California farmer to use the migrants in order to lower their costs and make their profit margin higher. How they starved and cheated the poor, working man, in order to keep him desperate for food and too weak to protest. Above all, it showed everyone that these "damn Okies" were all simply men, women, and children, no different from anyone else, just starving, desperate people. They were human beings with feelings and not the uncivilized beasts they were portrayed as at the time.
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