【正文】 t matter mainly from his own land and his own people, Steinbeck is surely one of the most American of all modern American writers. Critics have tended to divide Steinbeck39。s first novel Cup of Gold, a romantic historical novel of adventure, appeared two months after the stock market crash of 1929 and the depression, it attracted little attention. His two subsequent novels, The Pastures of Heaven and To a God Unknown, again brought Steinbeck neither fame nor fortune. All these three novels were unsuccessful both critically and mercially. Steinbeck39。s first big book The Grapes of Wrath. All of them were immensely popular and closely associated with the social and political environment of 1930s America. The Grapes of Wrath , when published, made a tremendous stir in the country. Owing to the success of these books, Steinbeck was once considered as the young American novelist whose future seems most exciting and most assured.2(Ibid:35) With The Grapes of Wrath, for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, Steinbeck arrived at international renown, became the foremost novelist in American fiction and won such a label as the spokesman of the 1930s and one of the representatives of the 1930s .This period (19361939) is often mentioned as the second phase and books written then produced the stereotype of Steinbeck39。s writings has been founded on the works produced by him in this period. On the whole, it was a period when Steinbeck became mature in art, and produced his representative works. From Dubious Battle to The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck wrote the history of 1930s America in his specific way, interpreting his contemporaries39。s career demonstrated a gradual break from the fiction of the late 1930s. His works were highly varied but less wellreceived. When the Second World War broke out in Europe, he went to North Africa and Italy as a correspondent, out of which came several journalistic books. 3(Ibid:56) The fourth and last phase (19531968) of his career was not so productive. At the time of his death Steinbeck39。 his last fulllength work, American and Americans, had not been widely reviewed, being mistakenly regarded as merely a glossy coffee table book.B The Background of the Story The 1930s is a turbulent times ,strikes took places in several big cities because of industrial depression and uneven distribution of wealth。farmers were driven off their land owing to the poor harvest of the crops all this culminated in the collapse of the Stock Market in 1929,known as the Crash ,which marked the beginning of the Great Economic Depression in the , political corruptions ,organized crimes ,the growth of radical labor force ,and the terrorist drive of the Ku Klux Klan made an already disorderly world even more turbulent. The Grapes of Wrath proves to be a symbolic journey of man on the way to finding some truth about life and social conditions, and a record of the dispossessed and the wretched farmers during the Great Depression as well.The title of the book es from ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic ,’ a war song of the Civil War, in which there are the lines ‘Mine eyes have seen the glory of the ing of the Lord. The Great Depression throws the country into country into abject chaos and makes life intolerable for the luckless millions. One of the worst stricken areas is the central prairie lands. There the farmers bee bankrupt and begin to move in a body toward California, where they hope to have a better life. The movement to the west areas is a most tragic and brutalizing human experience for families like the Joads .There is unspeakable pain and suffering on the road , and death occurs frequently .Everywhere they reach California and try to settle down, they meet with bitter resistance from the local landowners. What the novel presents us is the classic tale of the Great Depression in the Sunbelt and the animating myth that of the Garden and man39。 it was a symbol of the horror in store for midwestern and southwestern tanners. As the drought worsened, the topsoil of this region was lifted and blew away by the constant winds. We have a very detailed, impressive description of this phenomenon in the first chapter of the novel. The opening line of the novel is panoramic as it evokes the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth. Following this panoramic, generalized opening, the paragraph begins to focus on the plows crossed and recrossed the rivulet marks. And finally, from the vague, impressionistic opening image, our vision moves from the distant, the growing corn, to the very close description, the line of brown that spreads “along the edge of each green bayonet. And then the novel begins to register broader details of clouds and generalized weeds until the paragraph ends where it begins, with a panoramic image of the earth, which became pale, pink: in the red country and white in the gray country.4(Ibid,256).The influence of the Great Depression and the natural disaster seem to show the appearing of the story, the life experience of the farmers in this period is the sources of the farmers in the story. They are the stereotypes of the figures in the story. Chapter I From an Individualist to a collectivist A． To Make Life by Himself In the Grapes of wrath, the Joads experience the process from the pursuit of happiness to the break of the hope. The great changes take place in Tom’s mind. In chapter one, he returned from jail, at that time, his ideas was limited in the interests of the whole family, that is to say , Tom in this period was individual, in the early time, he cares about his economic situation very much , and show little sympathy on the broken farmers who driven off their land , the indifferent thoughts about them was evidenced that Tom thin