Setting

The setting in The Grapes of Wrath begins in Sallisaw, Oklahoma. The narrator gives a painfully vivid description of the disaster zone left in the wake of the dust storms that occurred while Tom was in prison. Days and weeks went by without any rain, and instead of rain came wind, scattering around all the dry dust around and ruining the once prosperous farmland.

The novel opens up with this horrible event, and the reader witnesses how the landowners and farmers and tenants were sent into poverty and despair. Their crops were totally ruined and they had no other prospects, so they simply could no longer make do.

"Every moving thing lifted the dust into the air: a walking man lifted a thin layer as high as the waist, a wagon lifted the dust as high as the fence tops, and an automobile boiled a cloud beneath it. The dust was long in settling back again...when the dust from the storm settled it settled on the corn, piled up on the tops of fence posts, piled up on wires; it settled on roofs, it blanketed the weeds and trees." -Chapter One.

Because of the destruction caused by the dust storms, the Joad family and many other families in their same situation make the decision to pack up all they have left and head to California, where they think are jobs and land available. The next setting in the novel is along Route 66, when the families are confined to the tight spaces of their cars.

After all of this, things do not get any better after they finally reached California. The work camps are overcrowded and dirty and unsafe. The first 'Hooverville' the Joad family stays at is full of starving people who have little left to their names and will fight to the death to be able to feed their families.

In some senses, California was very beautiful. But in others, it was pure destruction.