The Grapes of Wrath: Steinbeck Centennial Edition

by John Steinbeck

(New York: Penguin Books, 2002)

Trade Paperback, 455 Pages, Historical Fiction

ISBN: 9780142000663, US$17.00

From the Cover: The Grapes of Wrath is a landmark of American literature. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. Although it follows the movement of hundreds of thousands of men and women and the transformation of an entire nation, The Grapes of Wrath is also the story of one Oklahoma family, the Joads, who are driven off their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plain-spoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity. First published in 1939, The Grapes of Wrath summed up its era in the way that Uncle Tom’s Cabin summed up the years of slavery before the Civil War. Sensitive to fascist and communist criticism, Steinbeck insisted that “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” be printed in its entirety in the first edition of the book—which takes its title from the first verse: “He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.” At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s fictional chronicle of the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s is perhaps the most American of American Classics.

My Review: As of right now, having read The Pearl, The Grapes of Wrath and being someway into East of Eden, I am not quite sure how I feel about John Steinbeck; in regards to him as an author, in regards to him as a storyteller, and in regards to him as an Eminent Author (as the professor of my class claims). This is not to take anything away from those who like Steinbeck, or feel that he is a Great American Author … I am, shall we say, unconvinced of it. Not that there isn’t something to the works of John Steinbeck. After all, if I can argue—and, if I do say so myself, argue successfully—that Stephen King is worthy of critical inquiry (and have been able to write to separate papers to that effect) then I am not ready to completely write-off Steinbeck yet. I am just unconvinced. (I feel the same about J.D. Salinger and The Catcher in the Rye, but that’s a discussion for another day.)

As for The Grapes of Wrath, some would call this the Great American Novel. That what Steinbeck has done is create a novel that so embodies the true American Experience that it should be taught at all levels, and in spite of what I have stated in my opening paragraph, I would tend to agree with those people to a certain extent. I don’t know that The Grapes of Wrath is The Great American Novel. I’m not even sure that it embodies the American Experience, but should it be taught? Definitely. To high school students and to college students.

If nothing else, The Grapes of Wrath is a fascinating meditation on philosophy (social, political and economic) that uses the Great Depression and the Okie Migration as its backdrop. Is it a communist novel, as some alleged? Possibly. Is it a novel that advocates socialism? More than likely? Does any of that matter? Not really, because at its heart, what The Grapes of Wrath does is humanize a segment of the American population that was being increasingly dehumanized and shows that these are the proverbial OTHERS, but instead are our fellow human beings, human beings that deserve human considerations. That deserve dignity, respect and compassion; things that Steinbeck, in his travels with the Dust Bowl migrants, found were routinely denied these people.

Does that make Steinbeck a communist? Does it make him a socialist? No, it makes him a human being who cares about other human beings, and that is something that is just as lacking today, in 2009, as it was in 1939 when Steinbeck wrote the novel. It is no wonder the reaction that Steinbeck received upon its publication, people who act inhumanly do not like to be shown as acting inhumanly, and even though the novel is seventy years old, it is—to trot out the cliché—just as timely today as it was in the 30s and 40s. The treatment of the migrants is not too far from the treatment that migrant farm workers receive today on farms and towns and cities across the United States, but especially in the West.

Imagine a novel that is written that shows how migrant workers are denied their basic human rights. They are forced to live on the side of the road, in a field or in cramped housing quarters that are less than primitive and don’t even have the basic hygienic necessities, they (and their children) often go hungry, work for a pittance doing hard, back-breaking labor, all so that people in San Francisco, or Seattle, or Los Angeles, or New York can eat a fresh apple, or have fresh asparagus or lettuce on their dinner table. Imagine that these workers, when they go into town to buy the necessities of life, are dealt badly with, cheated, taken advantage of because they have nothing and so, are desperate. Imagine that if they try to organize, or demand that they be treated as fellow human beings, are beaten, rounded up, imprisoned, deported. Now imagine that the author of the novel pointed the finger of blame not only at the farmers, not only at the banks, or the government, but also at you, the Reader, implicating you in the inhumane treatment of these people because you not only benefit from their labor but you also do nothing to ease their burden. Imagine the public outcry that would arise from such a novel, and not necessarily outcry for the better. People don’t like it pointed out that they are acting inhumanely, and will often act to suppress any indication that they are to blame.

These conditions are not just in the past. This is not just something that happened to “Okies.” We are witnessing similar conditions and similar treatment of migrant workers in our country today. The use of so-called “illegal immigrants” to cut asparagus or work in factories or build houses is decried publically, they are labeled a threat to the “American Way of Life” and yet, no one wants to give up their lettuce or cheap clothes or their McMansion (all made possible through the labor of “illegal immigrants”) or even to replace these people in the workforce. We are quite content to eat our apples and oranges and potatoes, just as long as someone else puts the sweat into the harvest effort, who cares if they are paid pennies on the dollar for the work?

The problem is that we, as Americans, obviously haven’t learned the lessons of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl and the treatment of the migrants—as shown in The Grapes of Wrath—because we are making many of the same mistakes here and now, that were being made then.

I first read this novel in high school (my junior year, American literature), and I have to say that it didn’t speak to me. Sure, I “got” what the story and message was, and I even wrote a paper on it (“The Christian Allegory as Contained in The Grapes of Wrath”) but it wasn’t immediate to my life, there and then. However, in the intervening sixteen years, I have changed as a person, not the least of which is having become a Husband and Father and Head of Household; the Provider (though to give my wife her due, she does pull in more per month than I do, I’m more of a figurehead, but the concerns are there). In high school I did not identify with any one character, however, this time around, I found myself identifying more and more with the character of Ma Joad. She was the one, the pragmatic leader who does what needs to be done so that her family will survive; so that Ruthie and Winfield have water to drink when they are thirsty and food to eat when they are hungry. She is a caring and soulful woman thrown into the worst of circumstances, which are out of her control, and forced to make hard decisions. I can relate to this as, I imagine, can any parent who cares more than a little about their children. One of the worst things in the world is to hear my three-year-old son say that his tummy hurts because he is hungry, it tears at my heartstrings. Yet, all I have to do is walk in to the kitchen and ask him if he wants a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or some noodles. I can’t imagine the heartbreak and fear that would arise if the choice wasn’t there. If, as the Joads (and hundreds of thousands of displaced migrants), there was absolutely nothing to offer; if I couldn’t go to the tap and give my one-year-old daughter a cup of cold water to drink when she is thirsty.

Add to this parental response to the novel that there really couldn’t not have been a more relevant time in my life to be reading The Grapes of Wrath, given the current economic climate, that the emotional impact of the novel is almost overwhelming. It is one thing to read about the Joads and their neighbors being forced off their land and out of their homes by heartless banks when the economy is booming. It is another thing entirely to read about such things when home foreclosures are at an all time high and the unemployment rate is higher than its been in I don’t know how many years.

This is what I wrote on that in the front of my book during a class discussion: With the current economic climate (for the sake of argument, let’s just use 2008-2009 as the years for the current Recession) we are now closer to The Grapes of Wrath than we have been since it was written in 1939, during the Great Depression and the events that it describes. Like the Roaring 20s which ended with the Stock Market Crash in 1929, the “Boom 90s” came to an end with the credit and mortgage crises in the early 2000s. Even though it was written seventy years ago (as I have noted earlier) it is a novel that is still very relevant and very current. Though we haven’t had a “Dust Bowl” (knockonwood) we have had some recent natural disasters that underscore the fragility of our economy and infrastructure, and while they have not necessarily decimated farmland like in the 30s, they have crippled the production of our natural resources; Hurricane Katrina, for example, and the flooding of New Orleans and the destruction of offshore oilrigs along the Gulf Coast.

The message of The Grapes of Wrath is one of compassion and understanding. It is a novel that forces us to ask the question of ourselves: What would I give up to help someone else? All too often we either do not ask ourselves this question, and when we do, often we find that we do not like the answer that we give and what it says about ourselves. We teach and talk about The Grapes of Wrath and John Steinbeck and his concept of “WE” instead of “I” … but all too often, we don’t live that message.

The Grapes of Wrath is a novel that turns the mirror onto the reader and forces them to ask the hard questions and to give the even harder answers. It is a novel that, now more than ever, we all should read and take to heart. If not, we will come out of the current economic crisis, but will we be better for it on the other side?

This review can also be found at Bryan’s Book Blog