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The Grapes of Wrath is an eye-opening novel which deals with the struggle for survival of a migrant family of farmers in the western United States. The book opens with a narrative chapter describing Oklahoma, and the overall setting. It sets the mood of an area which has been ravished by harsh weather. "The sun flared down on the growing corn day after day until a line of brown spread along the edge of each …

…was in need. Nothing exemplifies this ideal more then the closing scene of the novel. Rose, surrounded by a family overshadowed by personal loss, lack of income and food, in a period of dying (metaphorically speaking), gives life to a dying stranger regardless of who he was, or where he came from. This is what true life to the migrant workers was all about, and this is what they had demonstrated time and time again.