The Grapes of Wrath

I think I was first motivated to read this book about 10 years ago because I read about how it had been so widely banned, most recently as 2002 in George County, Mississippi. Anything that gets folks that upset has to be worth reading. I have always believed that The Grapes of Wrath and 1984 should be required reading for every high school civics class. I really don’t know of a better source for describing the effects of out of control, tyrannical capitalism (The Grapes of Wrath) or out of control, tyrannical government (1984).

There has been a lot written about this, but being a general fan of Steinbeck, this book is written in a very different style than his other work. The actual main plot only occupies roughly half the book. The remaining portions are almost independent sermons about a myriad of topics that relate to the most recent part in the story of the Joads. Many people attribute this to the influence of his first wife Carol, who was much more politically radical than John was. If you wanted to throw a couple of criticisms out there, you could say that it gets a little preachy at times. And you could say that it unfairly portrays entire groups of people/objects unfairly. For example, all religious people are nuts, tractors are bad, banks are bad, all cops are bad, the American Legion is bad, all big farmers are evil, etc. I would defend this by saying that those points are valid only when you think of this novel as a history book, which it is not. It may be set in a real place and real time, but it is a story. And criticizing those things is about as valid as criticizing the Wizard of Oz for making all flying monkeys bad. But needless to say, it did make a lot of people in California mad when the book was released in 1939 and the John Ford movie was released in 1940.

Also, the allegories and symbolism in this novel are way more “thick” than any of his other works. Almost every small description seems to have some relation to the over arching themes of the novel. From the description of the tortoise spreading seeds, to the action of a seed drill, to the way the other children treat Ruthie when she is being selfish, to construction of the dike to hold back the flood water from the box cars, every chapter contains these devices that drive home the plight of the migrants. But one element that is very present here and continues throughout Steinbeck’s work is the idea of nature as a refuge. Nature is shown to be the only escape from man’s tyranny, albeit a temporary one. That is why Muley lives in his cave, Tom lives in the brush, and Noah walks down the Colorado river.  

There is also a wonderful economics lesson under a few of the sermons. The farmers complain about how low the prices are and that they can't afford to even have the crops picked. That is what is driving down wages. The more they lower the wages, the more price falls. Of course this is the heart of the effect of currency deflation in a recession. The prices are so bad because no one can afford to buy food. If you paid the workers more, they would buy the food, and the prices would go up. 

I have always thought of how powerful the description is of how the big land owners walk through the Hooverville camps looking for workers. They don't look for the strongest men, they look for the parents with the sickest children, because "they will work all day for a cup of flour".  Also, I love the description of how the workers organized in factory in Akron, Ohio. They were getting beaten up when they tried to unionize. Then one day they formed a Turkey Shooting Club. On a Sunday afternoon, 5,000 men marched down main street carrying rifles, went out into the country and had turkey shoot the rest of the day. Suddenly no more union busters gave them trouble.

But for some reason, one of my favorite lines has always been from Ma Joad.

"Woman can change better'n a man," Ma said soothingly. "Woman got all her life in her arms. Man got it all in his head".

And then responding to Pa saying "Seems like our life's over and done."

"No, it ain't, " Ma smiled. "It ain't, Pa. An' that's one more thing a woman knows. I noticed that. Man, he lives in jerks - baby born an' a man dies, an' that's a jerk - gets a farm an' loses a farm, an' that's a jerk. Woman, it's all one flow, like a stream, little eddies, little waterfalls, but the river, it goes right on. Woman looks at it like that. We ain't gonna die out. People is goin' on - changin' a little maybe, but goin' right on".