Pilgrimage and Communitas in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939)

Abstract

This article examines John Steinbeck’s 1939 American realist novel The Grapes of Wrath through the lens of pilgrimage and rites of passage. In The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck depicts the migration of the Joads, an impoverished Oklahoman family journeying west during the American Great Depression. By drawing on Victor and Edith Turner’s analysis of liminality and communitas, this article seeks to examine the family’s journey as an act of pilgrimage. Ultimately, through their experience of displacement, travel and Turnerian communitas, the Joads evolve to realise their place within a larger, universal humanity. This article also compares the family’s migration to that of the Biblical Patriarchs, seeking to add further dimension to previous examinations of the novel’s Christian motifs.