The Grapes of Wrath is basically, one drawn out, thirty chapter, one hundred fifty five page long conflict. Every chapter, a new conflict is settled, and then another springs up and takes the last ones place, and sometimes more than one new conflict arose. There was one constant conflict though, and it is the basic human conflict people have to face every day, maybe not as prevalent as the characters in the book, but in one form or another, everyone shares one common urge to do things: survival.
The first conflict of the book, even before the farmers were kicked off of their land, even before the first events of the book, was the four year jail sentence Tom Joad served, which the effects were seen in the early part of the book. He seems to be cool headed, even when criticizing people, for example, the truck driver that was being a little too nosey. I think this came out of having to behave in prison, lest he wanted to get punished.
Another major conflict would have to be the death of the various members of the Joad family; Granpa, Granma, Rose of Sharon’s baby, and Casy, who was like an honorary Joad. They also had to deal with people just leaving like Noah, Connie and Al. I think that in some ways it the deaths and losses helped solidify the family, made them feel like they should keep going on in their name.
Of course, the main conflict that propelled this book forward was the need for the Joads to find work somewhere so that they could feed themselves and maybe even get a nice house and maybe, just maybe, a bit of land. The closer and closer they got to California though, the harder it was to survive and the more warning signs there were. And when they actually got to California, they had a hard time surviving, and since the book cuts off like it did, we will never know what happened to them.
Steinbeck, John, and Robert J. DeMott. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Penguin, 2006. Print.
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