The state of homelessness in John Steinbecks The Grapes of Wrath and Sengai Aaliyans Marangal Malintha Boomi

John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. (February 27, 1902 December 20, 1968) was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939), East of Eden (1952) and the novella Of Mice and Men (1937). As the author of twenty-seven books, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books, and five collections of short stories, Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.

Sengai Aaliyan
Dr.K.Kunarasa or Senkaialiyan was born in 1941 in Jaffna. Not only a prolific writer, he is also a well-known critic. He has more than thirty novels and three accomplishments in the sphere of fictional history to his credit. Dr.Kunarasa was awarded the Sahithiya Mandala awards more than six times for his achievements in writing Novels and short stories. Some of his short stories had been translated into Sinhala and published in weeklies. One of his novels, named 'The Beast', was translated into English.

The Grapes of Wrath - The Grapes of Wrath portrays life during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl in
America. It documents the western movement of one family and a nation in search of work and human dignity.

*The Great Depression -The United States was thrown into despair on Black Tuesday, October 29,
1929, the day the stock market crashed and the official beginning of the Great Depression. Living during the time of the Great Depression was difficult for everyone because of the lack of employment opportunities, which lead to hunger, anger and homelessness.

*The Dust Bowl - The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the US and Canadian prairies during the 1930s. In 1935, many families were forced to leave their farms and travel to other areas seeking work because of the drought (which at that time had lasted four years). Dust Bowl conditions fomented an exodus of the displaced from Texas, Oklahoma, and the surrounding Great Plains to adjacent regions. More than 500,000 Americans were left homeless. The Dust Bowl exodus was the largest migration in American history. Maranangal Malintha Boomi Mranangal Malintha Boomi portrays the 1995 exodus of Tamil civilians from
Jaffna. It unfolds the pathetic predicament of homelessness in Jaffna peninsula due to internal displacement, caused by the ethnic conflict. *The Jaffna Exodus Eighteen years ago, the entire town of Jaffna, the largest Tamil population in Sri Lanka, streamed out of their homes. On October 30, 1995, half a million men, women and children walked several miles east, crossing the Navatkuli bridge into the neck of the peninsula. Many then made the dangerous boat journey on to Kilinochchi in the Vanni.