When Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature (1962), the Swedish Academy called the book "an epic chronicle."
There is a reference in the Battle Hymn of the Republic, by Julia Ward Howe, when she describes the Messiah as "trampling out the vineyards where the grapes of wrath are stored,"
The film was produced by Darryl F. Zanuck in 1940. John Ford won the Academy Award for Directing, as did Jane Darwell[?] for Best Supporting Actress. Other nominations were for Best Picture, Henry Fonda for Best Actor, Robert L. Simpson[?] for Best Film Editing, Edmund H. Hansen[?] for Best Sound Recording, and Nunnally Johnson[?] for Best Screenplay Writing. The film has subsequently been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
Woody Guthrie wrote The Ballad of Tom Joad the night he saw the film. He described the film in a column:
The novel is frequently assigned in high school literature classes and in 2001, it would be listed as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century as selected by the editorial board of the American Modern Library.
See also T.C. Boyle's The Tortilla Curtain (1995) for a novel with a similar subject matter.
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