The novel The Grapes of Wrath has an unusual structure and a uniquely intricate narrative strategy. There are thirty chapters in all, but fifteen of them are not so much about the Joads themselves, as about the Joads" surrounding environment, and the similar problems faced by other migrants like the Joads. The intercalary chapters provide the book with a universality it would not have otherwise. The intercalary chapters themselves can be divided into three categories. The first category has to do with the migrants" getting ready to leave the Midwest, for California. The second category has to do with their process of traveling westward. The third category has to do with the aftermath of the journey once they arrive in California. The Grapes of Wrath, while not universally well-received, was nevertheless as socially powerful in its time as other socially-critical American novels, such as Harriet Beecher Stowe"s Uncle Tom"s Cabin and Upton Sinclair"s The Jungle. As Claudia Durst Johnson states:.

             In 1939, as the nation continued to suffer from an economic depression .

             Regarded as one of the most devastating events in its history, a young .

             California writer named John Steinbeck saw into print a novel about a family.

             of migrant agricultural workers who had fled Oklahoma to find a new life in .

             California. . . The Grapes of Wrath, had an immediate and explosive effect.

             on the public. . . Steinbeck was regarded as a hero who had had the courage.

             to portray appalling conditions as they really were. (xi) .

             As Harold Bloom points out: "The Grapes of Wrath is a flawed bur permanent American book, and its continued popularity after well more than half a century seems to indicate that it is anything but a period piece" (5). Clearly, the novel has stood the test of time, but it is also an experimental and at times eccentric work.