Textual Transformations in John Steibeck's The Grapes of Wrath

The first half of the twentieth century regarded as the modernist period is characterised by a cultural melting pot of various isms a technological boom social and political crises on the old as well as the new continent. In terms of cultural studies the period can be characterized as a time of ambivalence. On the one hand we may discern a firm belief in the immense technological and industrial power of human beings. In art – according to Habermas – however one can detect “a split between an essentially romantic conservatism and progressivism that puts its weight behind science and technology.” (Giddens 1981 16) By the same token due to the experiences of the first world war in which “mass society had produced a form of mass destruction” (Lauter 2006 852) an immensely pessimistic view of technology came into being. As a result of these events a sense of alienation was expressed by artists such as Gertrude Stein Ernest Hemingway (ibid.) and at least to some extent by John Steinbeck.