Human Conflicts Against Nature And Mankind: An Ecohumanist Approach To John Steinbeck’s The Grapes Of Wrath

Abstract

Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath is regarded as an American Epic. Steinbeck’s view on humanity is well expressed in the novel. Though the novel is a historical record of a crucial period in America, Steinbeck has unified his views on nature and man in it. Man’s unendurable sufferings inflicted upon him by the natural calamities, which greedy capitalists further intensified, were well depicted in the novel. The novel encompasses various themes like Capitalism, Marxism, Naturalism, and Ecocriticism. Ecohumanism is a branch of ecocriticism which studies the connection between man and nature. This paper focuses on the human misery portrayed in the novel The Grapes of Wrath, which was imposed on man by nature and fellow human beings.