Promised Land and Broken Dreams

From the beginning of the American history, the settling of the far westernfrontier has habitually been viewed in almost mystical political terms as a hea-vensent opportunity to "go West and grow up with the country." This assumptionof the West as a kind of Eden is also a major theme in Western American Liter-ature although it has been challenged by such pioneering, observant and realisticwriters as Hamlin Garland and Willar Cather. Viewed against this background,John Steinbeck’s masterpiece The Grapes of Wrath constitutes another