The Grapes of Wrath: What are the causes, gains, and losses of the conflict dealt with in this book?

The conflict in this book is easily identifiable. The Great Depression is forcing people to leave their homes in the hope for work somewhere. The story is about tenant farmers mostly, who are forced from the farms that they tend to by bankers and tractors. They know that they can not stay in the desolate place that was once their home. A drought has taken over and there is not enough healthy crop for them to stay and live of the land in Oklahoma. The losses dealt with in this book is that the families have to sell all of their possessions at insanely low prices to try and have enough money to buy a crappy car that the dealership has just made very expensive. Some of the cars do not make it to where they are going and they have thrown away their possessions and the money that they made from them. There are not really any gains in this story other than the family comes closer together. Another loss is that once the Joads reach California, after selling all of their possessions and buying a truck they venture to California or the promise land, they realize that there is no work. They traveled all this way for nothing. Eventually though they are able to find enough work to make them money for some food and some liquor, which only solves temporary problems.

The family also losses Tom again, after the youngest boasts about how he has killed two people. This is obviously another lost dealt with in this book. He is a good worker and eventually is able to come out of hiding but I wonder how much money he could have made them if he did not have to hide which could have bought them more food. A gain in this story also comes as a loss. Rose of Sharon births a still born baby, loss. But after their temporary home floods, they are forced to retreat to a barn where they find a man and his son. The man sacrificed his food for his kid and his now dying of hunger. He can not digest solid food and needs soup or milk. All of the family leaves the barn except Rose of Sharon and she suckles the man so that he may regain some strength (Steinbeck, Chapter 30).

Steinbeck, John, and Robert J. DeMott. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Penguin, 1992. Print.