Unit 5: American Literature

Depression, Realism and Escapism

Steinbeck's novel

The Depression caused novelists to focus on social forces. In the West, John Steinbeck (1902-1968) told sympathetic stories about drifting farm laborers and factory workers. His 1939 masterpiece, The Grapes of Wrath, depicted an impoverished midwestern family joining a stream of poor farm laborers heading west to the "land of opportunity," the state of California. By interweaving chapters of social commentary with his story, Steinbeck made this portrait of the Joad family into a major statement about the Depression.

Gone with the Wind

Historical fiction became increasingly popular in the Depression, for it allowed readers to retreat to the past. The most successful of these books was Gone with the Wind,a 1936 best-seller about the Civil War by a southern woman, Margaret Mitchell.

In 1939, war broke out in Europe, and eventually the entire world was embroiled in conflict again. The United States joined the war in December 1941, fighting both in Europe and in the Pacific. Right after the war, a series of young writers wrote intelligent novels showing how the pressures of war highlight men's characters. These included Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead and Herman Wouk's Caine Mutiny. By 1961, Joseph Heller (1923-) published his satiric war novel Catch-22 in which war is portrayed as an absurd exercise for madmen.

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