Category: 1In the first chapter, John Steinbeck defines "family" in The Grapes of Wrath by showing when describing a family in the first chapter, John Steinbeck actually showed every family in Oklahoma struggling to stay to have a roof over their heads and food to get home. The environmental description in the first chapter in some ways tells its own story. From healthy, well-developed crops to dying, thin-crusted lands, time showed things were falling apart. And economic structures had declined since the Oklahoma dust bowl, few people were getting paid, and after days and days, jobs began to become harder to find. The connection between humans and tools in the first chapter was that both seemed to do just about anything to make money. Category: 2 This novel described adaptation and change by forcing families to move into a different place and house to which they quickly had to adapt. For people, moving from one job to another was very stressful, especially when you have a family to take care of. For example Pa Joad does not adapt to the new e...