Apply the Strategy

Students in the 21^st century who have never experienced a severe economic depression may not be able to develop a full understanding of the scope of this tragic period unless they can empathize with the people who lived it. Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath can help students to understand the physical, social, economic, and political stresses -- as well as the costs in terms of human suffering -- that many Americans endured during the Great Depression. You will now have the opportunity to link literature and history by analyzing The Grapes of Wrath.

Discuss the following questions with your colleagues or respond to them in your journal. You can use examples from the literature and other history sources to answer the questions.

1. What do you think of when you hear the word "Okie"?
2. What images come to mind upon hearing the words "Oklahoma" and "California?" What did these words mean to Americans in the 1930s? Why?
3. What do you know about the physical landscape of eastern Oklahoma and California's Central Valley? How did the physical environment of these areas affect families like the Joads in the 1930s?
4. What factors contributed to the transition from small family farms to large commercial farms in both Oklahoma and California? What were the effects (for farmers) of that transition?
5. What human and environmental forces drove the Joads and other families from their land in Oklahoma, and what drew them to California?
6. In the 1930s, what attitudes did people in western states have toward the arrival of migrant workers? Can parallels be drawn between those attitudes and the attitudes toward migrants (and immigrants) today? What are some of the major similarities and differences between the 1930s migrants and migrant workers in America today?
7. How have the features and functions of Highway 66 changed from the migration of farm families to southern California in the 1930s, to the 1940s when Nat King Cole sang his famous song about Route 66, to the 1960s when the interstate system was established, and to the present day when the once-famous highway has virtually disappeared? What role has the automotive industry played in this highway-to-interstate evolution?

Now, reflect on your experience analyzing The Grapes of Wrath. Discuss the following questions with your colleagues or reflect on them in your journal.

1. How did answering the questions above help you as a reader focus on the history content in The Grapes of Wrath? What other questions might you ask students to help them tease the history out of the novel?
2. How did your experience with this novel impact your understanding of the time period when the novel takes place? How does this understanding compare to what you would have learned if you only used a textbook and/or other non-fiction accounts to understand the Depression era? Explain.
3. Did you experience any particular empathy for the characters in the book -- and by association the actual people who lived through the Great Depression -- as a result of your reading? Discuss your experience with historical empathy as it applies to The Grapes of Wrath.

Optional

After working with the sample questions about the novel, devise some of your own to help students apply what they discover in The Grapes of Wrath to important topics being explored in your own unit on the Great Depression.