The Significance of Earth in American and Egyptian Novels: A Comparative Study of Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and al-Sharqawi’s Egyptian Earth.

Abstract

    This comparative research examines earth as a symbolic manifestation of survival, identity, resistance, exploitation in both American and Egyptian socio-historical contexts in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (1939) versus al-Sharqawi's Egyptian Earth (1954). Using French and American schools of comparative literature, this research shows how both novels, despite their disparate cultural contexts, employ socialist realism to critique systemic oppression. The Dust Bowl in Steinbeck tells the story of Oklahoma tenant farmers uprooted by forces of capitalism, depicting how the ground was turned not just from a foundation that sustains life into an instrument of disenfranchisement. By contrast, al-Sharqawi’s villagers in Egypt tackle feudal corruption and collusion with state in seeing that which somehow we can all agree in fighting to defend as inherited territory and a point of collective resistance. Striking analogies emerge: the earth, that (1) provides basic sustenance and perpetuates clan existence; (2) is an integral component of identity—rooted in ancestral attachment; (3) is a class battleground; influenced by exploitative systems (banks and corporations in America; landlords and officials in Egypt); and (4) invokes resistance, individual (exemplified by Muley Graves) in Steinbeck juxtaposed to collective (the village) in al-Sharqawi. The authors argue that each of these transforms the earth from an inert backdrop into an active symbol, one that thus reflects both crises in society and possible responses to their essence, as found in both books. By drawing on shared themes, this analysis deepens comparative literature through linking Western with Arabic realist traditions.