Abstract: Climate change and nutritional insecurity have become major concerns in the contemporary world. Environmental degradation, drought, soil erosion, and ecological imbalance have severely affected agricultural productivity and human survival across societies. Literature has always reflected the sufferings, struggles, and realities of human life, and many literary works portray the deep relationship between nature and human existence. John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath is one such remarkable novel which presents the tragic consequences of ecological destruction and hunger upon poor agrarian communities during the Dust Bowl period of the 1930s in America. The novel depicts how environmental catastrophe compels people to leave their homeland and migrate in search of food, shelter, and survival. Steinbeck realistically portrays the pain, displacement, poverty, starvation, and exploitation faced by migrant laborers whose lives are shattered due to climatic and economic crisis. The novel further exposes the unequal distribution of food resources, capitalist exploitation, and the commodification of agricultural production where abundance exists alongside hunger and deprivation. Through the suffering of the Joad family and other displaced communities, Steinbeck presents the harsh realities of nutritional insecurity and ecological collapse. This paper attempts to analyze The Grapes of Wrath from an ecocritical perspective and examines how the novel foregrounds climate crisis, human displacement, hunger, and the fragility of survival in a rapidly deteriorating ecological world.

Keywords:Climate Change; Nutritional Insecurity, Environmental Degradation, Human Survival, Hunger, Food Security, Migration, Agrarian Crisis.