The Grapes of Wrath: What universal themes does this book address?

The universal themes are part of the analysis and dissection of a book. In this book I think that sadness is a universal theme and feeling that people feel in this book. All of the middle-class people and everyone below them struggle to find a job so that they can earn money for food to feed their family. This whole thing is sad. It is also sad that our government could not send out food or supplies to help these people when it was the governments fault that this whole thing happened. Even if you had money and it was put away in a bank, they would not let you take it out because the banks had to use it to stay a float. When people thought that the market was going to crash, they went to the bank and took all of their money out and this only sped up the failure of our stock market.

The Okies had to travel all the way to California and they did all they could to survive. They had to sell all of their possessions for the hope of a job that for all they knew may not even be there. No one should have to go to such extremes just to survive and this is sad. Today, none of us think that we will miss a meal and we take for granted all that we have and all that we are blessed with. For one man in this book it even came to sucking a woman's teet so that he could survive because he had given all of his food to his son(Steinbeck,Chapter 30). This whole book is full of sadness and despair. Everyone is struggling to find work and food and people begin to die off from hunger or sickness, all of this is sad. If you can read this book and not find it sad, then I do not think you are human and have no emotion or feelings for another person's well being.

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