John Steinbeck (1902-1968) is considered the foremost novelist of the Great Depression of the 1930s, and his own life contains insights into the development of his sympathy for the dispossessed, the downtrodden and the migrant workers as evidenced in two of his early novels, the 1936 In Dubious Battle, and the 1939 The Grapes of Wrath. These novels reflect his concern with the struggles of common laborers, of which he had firsthand knowledge through his observations and work as a laborer, a seaman, surveyor and migratory worker among other jobs. He believed that one of the main functions of a writer was to "serve as the watch-dog of societyàto satirize its silliness, to attack its injustices, to stigmatize its faults" (McMichael 1939).
Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California to a middle-class family, and grew up in a valley that was fertile, but also one in which the agricultural and factory workers were exploited. "The plight of these workers made a deep impression on him" (Kneer 79A). "From his boyhood he was self-supporting; he worked as a laborer àand migratory fruit picker" (McMichael 1939). These experiences led to Steinbeck's interest in the human condition. In Dubious Battle focuses on the class struggle of the late 1920s and 1930s as it depicts "the lives of migrant workers and their resistance to exploitation by the entrenched forces of society" (McMichael 1939). Steinbeck's most famous novel, for which he received the 1940 Pulitzer Prize, The Grapes of Wrath, depicts the misery and migration of a poor family of "Oakies" forced to leave their home during the devastating Dust Bowl that ravaged the land. "In the morning the dust hung like fogàAll day the sun sifted down from the skyàan even blanket covered the earth" (Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath 6). The story of the Joad family becomes the story of all migrants who Steinbeck views as part of a greater social movement, as "lonely and perplexed" in "sadness and wor...