Book Review: The Grapes of Wrath

Rating:💔

The Grapes of Wrath is a novel by John Steinbeck about an Oklahoma farming family forced out of their land and questing for steady work in the far away state of California. I loved it, but God, it’s heartbreaking.

In the Comedy film Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Steve Martin and John Candy undergo a series of misadventures trying to return home for Thanksgiving. Most of their misfortune is self-inflicted, whether from Martin’s character’s pride or Candy’s character’s carelessness, and in the end, they become closer and everything works out.

The Grapes of Wrath is like if someone redid Planes, Trains and Automobiles in the Horror genre set during the Great Depression. The reader lands amidst a large, farming family of modest means. The Joads are individually diverse, but collectively full of integrity, industriousness, and dreams for the future.

Tom, the proud and protective eldest son, is fresh out of prison and hoping to rebuild his life. He returns to his family’s farm to find it demolished. They are soon to set off in a sketchy car headed West for California. Pamphlets indicate that there’s plenty of work to be had there picking oranges and peaches, and the family needs a way to sustain themselves.

Tom and his parents, siblings, grandparents, and former Preacher set off in a single truck piled high with their remaining possessions. What follows is an incremental stripping away of their physical and psychological well-being. You are the frog in boiling water with them for their journey as they face indignities that cross into deep injustice. Their resilience is all together unbelievable, but it’s not like they’re really given any other choices. Above all, their graciousness and support for each other is what is most admirable.

Steinbeck isn’t light-handed when it comes to describing the factors he believes put them in this situation.

The pursuit of endless profit:

…the owner men explained the workings and the thinkings of the monster that was stronger than they were. A man can hold land if he can just eat and pay taxes; he can do that.

Yes, he can do that until his crops fail one day and he has to borrow money from the bank.

The bank—the monster has to have profits all the time. It can’t wait. It’ll die. No, taxes go on. When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can’t stay one size.

One man on a tractor can take the place of twelve or fourteen families. Pay him a wage and take all the crop. We have to do it. We don’t like to do it. But the monster’s sick. Something’s happened to the monster.

But you’ll kill the land with cotton.

We know. We’ve got to take cotton quick before the land dies. Then we’ll sell the land…It’s not us, it’s the bank. A bank isn’t like a man. Or an owner with fifty thousand acres, he isn’t like a man either. That’s the monster. We’re sorry. It’s not us. It’s the monster. The bank isn’t like a man.

Yes, but the bank is only made of men.

No, you’re wrong there—quite wrong there. The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it.

The fear of an uprising where the have-nots take the property and resources of the powerful:

And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away. And that companion fact: when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need. And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed. The great owners ignored the three cries of history. The land fell into fewer hands, the number of the dispossessed increased, and every effort of the great owners was directed at repression. The money was spent for arms, for gas to protect the great holdings, and spies were sent to catch the murmuring of revolt so that it might be stamped out. The changing economy was ignored, plans for the change ignored; and only means to destroy revolt were considered, while the causes of revolt went on.

The tractors which throw men out of work, the belt lines which carry loads, the machines which produce, all were increased; and more and more families scampered on the highways, looking for crumbs from the great holdings, lusting after the land beside the roads. The great owners formed associations for protection and they met to discuss ways to intimidate, to kill, to gas. And always they were in fear of a principal—three hundred thousand—if they ever move under a leader—the end. Three hundred thousand, hungry and miserable; if they ever know themselves, the land will be theirs and all the gas, all the rifles in the world won’t stop them. And the great owners, who had become through their holdings both more and less than men, ran to their destruction, and used every means that in the long run would destroy them. Every little means, every violence, every raid on a Hooverville, every deputy swaggering through a ragged camp put off the day a little and cemented the inevitability of the day.

Steinbeck also communicates some strongly held beliefs fairly clearly. For example, working people’s ability to organize themselves:

They’re scairt we’ll organize, I guess. An’ maybe they’re right. This here camp is a organization. People there look out for theirselves. Got the nicest strang band in these parts. Got a little charge account in the store for folks that’s hungry. Fi’ dollars—you can git that much food an’ the camp’ll stan’ good. We ain’t never had no trouble with the law. I guess the big farmers is scairt of that. Can’t throw us in jail—why, it scares ’em. Figger maybe if we can gove’n ourselves, maybe we’ll do other things.

The police, especially a corrupt force, cause more trouble than they control:

“I’d like to go to one,” said Casy. “Like to see it. Fella says they ain’t no cops.”

“Folks is their own cops.”

Casy looked up excitedly. “An’ was they any trouble? Fightin’, stealin’, drinkin’?”

“No,” said Tom.

“Well, if a fella went bad—what then? What’d they do?”

“Put ’im outa the camp.”

“But they wasn’ many?”

“Hell, no,” said Tom. “We was there a month, an’ on’y one.”

Casy’s eyes shone with excitement. He turned to the other men. “Ya see?” he cried. “I tol’ you. Cops cause more trouble than they stop.

Most people will primarily look out for themselves and their families, but some people are of a nature to stand up to injustice at great personal cost and be smashed down for it. The rest depend on these people.

Think Pa’s gonna give up his meat on account a other fellas? An’ Rosasharn oughta get milk. Think Ma’s gonna wanta starve that baby jus’ ’cause a bunch a fellas is yellin’ outside a gate?”

Casy said sadly, “I wisht they could see it. I wisht they could see the on’y way they can depen’ on their meat—Oh, the hell! Get tar’d sometimes. God-awful tar’d. I knowed a fella. Brang ’im in while I was in the jail house. Been tryin’ to start a union. Got one started. An’ then them vigilantes bust it up. An’ know what? Them very folks he been tryin’ to help tossed him out. Wouldn’ have nothin’ to do with ’im. Scared they’d get saw in his comp’ny. Says, ‘Git out. You’re a danger on us.’ Well, sir, it hurt his feelin’s purty bad. But then he says, ‘It ain’t so bad if you know.’ He says, ‘French Revolution—all them fellas that figgered her out got their heads chopped off. Always that way,’ he says. ‘Jus’ as natural as rain. You didn’ do it for fun no way. Doin’ it ’cause you have to. ’Cause it’s you. Look a Washington,’ he says. ‘Fit the Revolution, an’ after, them sons-a-bitches turned on him. An’ Lincoln the same. Same folks yellin’ to kill ’em. Natural as rain.”’

“Don’t soun’ like no fun,” said Tom.

“No, it don’t. This fella in jail, he says, ‘Anyways, you do what you can. An’,’ he says, ‘the on’y thing you got to look at is that ever’ time they’s a little step fo’ward, she may slip back a little, but she never slips clear back. You can prove that,’ he says, ‘an’ that makes the whole thing right. An’ that means they wasn’t no waste even if it seemed like they was.”’

Worse circumstances lead to greater charity:

“You been frien’ly,” she said. “We thank you.”

The stout woman smiled. “No need to thank. Ever’body’s in the same wagon. S’pose we was down. You’d a give us a han’.”

“Yes,” Ma said, “we would.”

“Or anybody.”

“Or anybody. Use’ ta be the fambly was fust. It ain’t so now. It’s anybody. Worse off we get, the more we got to do.”

This book is just fantastic. I don’t think I liked it quite as much as East of Eden, but I absolutely loved it. Listening to it on Audiobook for a bit was also helpful to get some of the literary dialect use into my head.

I’d be remiss not to mention Sanora Babb, whose Dust Bowl notes Steinbeck was influenced by and whose own novel was cancelled after the success of The Grapes of Wrath.

If you didn’t read this book in High School, or you read it but didn’t like it very much, I’d recommend giving The Grapes of Wrath a(nother) go.