The Grapes of Wrath: Comparing Book and Movie Ford attempted to establish a sense of historical context by placing two paragraphs of prose on the screen immediately following the opening credits: In the central part of the United States of America there is a limited area called "Dust Bowl", due to the lack of rain. Here drought and poverty have combined to deprive many farmers of their land. This is the story of a farmer's family, forced from their fields by natural disasters and economic changes beyond anyone's control, and of their great journey to find peace, security and another home. In describing a limited area called the Dust Bowl, the prose serves to limit the scope of the tragedy about to be seen to a specific, isolated part of the nation. The simple past tense used in the final sentence of the first paragraph emphasizes the sense that all this was over by the time of the film, 1940. The second paragraph prepares us not for Steinbeck's image of failure on a national scale, but for the story of "the their own farming family", victims of changes "beyond anyone's control", and who will undertake a harrowing journey "in search of peace, security and another home". film that the director attempted to carefully avoid placing any specific blame on this potentially controversial film. The possibility of social change brought about by violent conflicts suggested in the novel will not even be hinted at. The film focuses only on the Joads, a migrant family from the Dust Bowl region, while the novel's focus shifts from the Joads to the plight of all the migrants who went to California...... middle of paper.. .... while farmers will continue to trudge along a long and difficult road. The novel The Grapes of Wrath argues that to survive spiritually and physically on the planet man must make a commitment to man and the environment, while the film version focuses on the traditional figure of the isolated individual who will do the "right" things . Sources Cited and Consulted: Davis, R.M. (ed.). Steinbeck: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1972. Pratt, John Clark. John Steinbeck: a critical essay. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans, 1970. Steinbeck, John. The grapes of wrath. New York: Penguin Books, 1986.The Grapes of Wrath Directed by John Ford Produced by Daryl F. Zanuck 20th Century Fox, 1940.Wyatt, David ed. New essays on the grapes of wrath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.