On John Steinbeck's Recreation Of The Pioneer Spirit

John Steinbeck was one of the most important American writers in the 20th century. When his novel The Grapes of Wrath was published in 1939, it quickly became a best-seller and exerted a great social impact in the late 1930s. However, in academic circles scholars have very controversial views about this novel, and their debates mainly focus on its structure, characterization and the idea of Steinbeck's literary creation. Through applying some theories of New Historicism, this thesis tries to interpret the novel from cultural perspective. The aim of this research is to explore why The Grapes of Wrath could produce a great social influence in the late 1930s so as to reveal the reason for its success.New Historicism is a research method for studying literature from cultural perspective. New Historicism scholars believe that the relations between literary texts and history are dynamic, and they view"a literary work as a social production, for them a text's meaning resides in the cultural system composed of the four interlocking discourses, including its historical context, its author, the text itself and its reader". This research is carried out from these four aspects. After a careful analysis of the novel's social-historical context, its author, the text and readers reception, this thesis argues that although the American Westward Movement had finished at the end of the 19th century, in The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck recreated a heritage of the Westward Movement——the pioneer spirit, and it was this literary recreation that contributed to the novel's great success and social influence.During the mid 1930s, because of the severe economic depression and sandstorms, more than 500,000 farmers living in the Dust Bowl region went bankrupt and they were forced to migrate westward to California for survival. Many Americans, particularly Californians once had very negative stereotype on these migrants. Thus, they were severely discriminated and exploited, suffering from the miserable life. In The Grapes of Wrath Steinbeck portrayed a Dust Bowl family, the Joads, whose westward experience vividly epitomized this mass migration. This thesis argues that Steinbeck intended to reconstruct the public image of Dust Bowl migrants through creating the Joads as later day pioneers. In the novel he depicted the Joads'pioneer spirit in their fight against the hardships, including the spirit of self-reliance and cooperation, advocate of equality and democracy, and the pragmatic and optimistic spirit. Steinbeck's recreation of the pioneer spirit reshaped the image of Dust Bowl migrants. Americans began to realize that they were admirable later day pioneers embracing the traditional American values. This new image changed Americans'attitude to the migrants and aroused their deep sympathy, which finally propelled the US federal government to take measures to improve the migrants'living condition. Secondly, through recreating the pioneer spirit, Steinbeck glorified the frontier cultural values. When he wrote The Grapes of Wrath, Americans were still suffering a lot in the Great Depression. The Depression in the 1930s was not only characterized as an economic disaster but also as a spiritual crisis. Steinbeck's recreation of the pioneer spirit provided a spiritual remedy to American readers and called on them to embrace the frontier values in a time of social crisis. After all, the pioneer spirit is the essence of American characters which have made the nation great. The thesis concludes that The Grapes of Wrath is not a radical novel as labeled by many critics. On contrary, it is uniquely American, invested with Steinbeck's strong faith in American cultural tradition. He used American ways to solve the American problem.Based on the four analytical procedures of the New Historicism, this thesis consists of four chapters. Chapter one discusses the social-historical context in which Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath. By an analysis of the author's working journals and biography, Chapter two explores the reasons for Steinbeck recreating the pioneer spirit. Based on a detailed textual analysis, Chapter three examines the expressions of pioneer spirit recreated in the novel. Chapter four investigates the impact of Steinbeck's recreation of the pioneer spirit in the late 1930s. This thesis tries to combine literary study and cultural study, and reveals the interactive relationship between the literary work's social-historical context, the author, the text and readers. Besides a textual analysis, the research scope also contains some historical documents, the author's journals and biography.