SOURCE: Garcia, Reloy. “The Rocky Road to Eldorado: The Journey Motif in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.” Steinbeck Quarterly 14, nos. 3-4 (summer-fall 1981): 83-93.

In the following essay, Garcia argues that The Grapes of Wrath derives its fundamental structure from the “initiation motif of African and Native American quest tales.

In The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck's unhappy travellers span two apparently distinct and opposing worlds: the droughty Oklahoma of the early chapters of the novel and the rich and fertile paradise of Chapter Eighteen and after. His characters, here and everywhere, stand invariably one foot in the Oklahoma of the real world and the other in the California of their dreams. This juxtaposition of promise with sterile reality is pervasive in Steinbeck. Melanie Mortlock contends that his characters “attempt to escape the physical world and the world of reality by creating a dream-world, a world of fantasy...