How does Steinbeck specifically address and accomplish the social purpose of The Grapes of Wrath?“The Grapes of Wrath is not a story told for...

Read as a parable, John Steinbeck's The Grapes
of Wrath exemplifies the evils of capitalism which are exemplified in some of
the intercalary chapters that illustrate the deviousness of the used-car salesmen and
the uncaring, huge machinery that levels the sharecroppers farm.  Stressing the
importance of individuals coming together as a collective soul not unlike the Emersonian
"Oversoul" which unifies all men, Steinbeck emphasizes the importance of men becoming
unified members of all mankind.  The shift in the Joad family from a patriarchal one to
that of a matriarchal one that recognizes the true value of family and the meaning to
life exemplifies this concept of community, as well.  Along with this shift to having
more of a heart for others, Tom Joad, influenced by the thinking of Jim Casy, a
Christ-like figure who contends that he "loves people so much that [he]'s fit to bust,"
takes up the fight begun by Casy who is murdered.  After Casy's death, Tom works with
the union in trying to make conditions better for the itinerant
worker.

That people working together can save one another
is a recurring theme throughout Steinbeck's parable.  In Chapter 12, for instance,
Steinbeck writes in parable form:

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There was a family of twelve and they were
forced off the land.  They had no car.  They build a trailer out of junk and loaded it
with their possessions.  They pulled it to the side of 66 and waited.  And pretty soon a
sedan picked them up.  Five of them rode in the sedan and seven on the trailer, and a
dog on the trailer.  They got to California in two jumps.  The man who pulled them fed
them.  And that's true.  But how can such courage be, and such faith in their onw
species?  Very few things would teach such
faith.

In the final chapter
in which the torrential rains drive the Joads out of their boxcar to seek shelter in a
barn, they find a boy and his starving father who cannot hold down bread; he needs soup
or milk.  After Rose o'Sharon has had a stillborn baby, she has milk in her breasts.  Ma
and she exchange looks, and Sharon gives the starving man literally "the milk of human
kindness," saving the man's life.  In the words of Tom who has just departed from his
mother,

"Well,
maybe like Casy says, a fell ain't got a soul of his own, but on'y a piece of a big
one--an' then--"

The moving
from the "I" to the larger self in which there is strength is certainly one social
pupose of the parable of The Grapes of
Wrath.