John Ernst Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902, to a middle-class family in Salinas, California (Swisher 13). Although he personally did not have to suffer through hunger or any major atrocities such as the Dust Bowl era, he was old enough at the time to understand what was happening. As one historian says, “Steinbeck worked as a laborer. He worked for a sugar-beet company, Spreckels sugar, sometimes laboring with migrants in the harvest field and living with …showed first 75 words of 2052 total…

…showed last 75 words of 2052 total…the delimia that so many people faced. It is impossible to conclude that The Grapes of Wrath is anything but a novel of social documentation. Through the character’s situations and all the turmoil that they face along with the actual facts of events that happened, Steinbeck beautifully provides the novel’s authenticity and credibility. It is for these and numerous other reasons why The Grapes of Wrath is considered a novel of social documentation.