At once naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" is perhaps the most American of American classics. Alt hough it follows the movement of thousands of men and women and the transformation of an entire nation during the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s, "The Grapes of Wrath" is also the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads, who are driven off their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. From their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of this new America, Steinbeck creates a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, tragic but ultimately stirring in its insistence on human dignity.