Historically, in nearly every regard, these two spheres appear to be separate and antagonistic, as aesthetically and thematically oppositional as Melville’s Moby-Dick and Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Alcott’s Little Women, but Steinbeck, borrowing from both spheres and adding grimly realistic contemporary twists of his own, has woven them together in The Grapes of Wrath.
