what does the title The Grapes of Wrath mean?

Question

Also, what is your response to the dust bowl migration?

Answer 1

http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~stephan/Steinbeck/grapes.html

Answer 2

1. Revelation 14:19
"The angel swung his sickle on the earth, gathered its grapes and threw them into the great winepress of God's wrath."
Revelation 14:18-20 (in Context) Revelation 14
New International Version (NIV)

The phrase from the Bible is paraphrased in "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."

"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
"He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored...."

The image of squeezed or pressed grapes suggests spilling blood. It is talking about Revelation's idea that at the end of time the Lord will come for the last battle in which justice will prevail, and all the rage and suffering will be transformed into glory. Wine often represents the Holy Spirit in the Bible.

The grapes are the terrible injustices that cause so much anger and misery in this world. The wrath is God's anger at seeing these things.

My reaction to the dust bowl migration is that it must have seemed to those people who had to pack up and move from their ancestral homes that they were living in a time that was like the terrible exiles of the Jews in the Bible. Extreme weather and drought are consistently represented in the Bible as judgments from God, and after the excesses of the 1920's, I'm sure that there was a sense that the dust bowl was some kind of divine judgment.

Answer 3

It probably means the fruit of actions taken by whoever. I read that book when I was about 14-15. It left a lasting impression and not a good one. I knew people who made that migration, they lived under a tree in an orchard for a while. One of their children was born there. They were very happy to get to Calif, get a job and go on with their lives.