Zsuzsanna Siklósi

Endurance: the Development of the Individual Through Hardships in the Grapes of Wrath and the Old Man and the Sea Zsuzsanna Siklósi

This thesis contrasts and compares two great American writers' novels of the twentieth century. Namely, one of them is The Grapes of Wrath written by John Steinback. The other is Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. The base of the comparison is the Endurance of Human Being. In both of the books the reader can detach several phases or stages of the characters' development while fighting for a certain aim which is not else than surviving. This thesis shows this developing process very profoundly while giving a parallel depiction of the characters' limit of Endurance. The reader can feel the heroes are almost doomed to fail. Both the Joad family in Steinbeck's novel and Santiago in Hemingway's work seem to give up their hope. However, the conclusion of the thesis enlightens the chance of surviving. In fact, both the Joads and Santiago are the great winners of their own fights. They prove the fact that it is worth going on in all kind of circumstances. Reading the thesis can be very thought-provoking for those who have got to know with both of the novels beforehand and are interested in psychology and literary analysis.