The Grapes of Wrath

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The Grapes of Wrath
First edition cover to "The Grapes of Wrath"
Author John Steinbeck
Cover artist Elmer Hader
Country United States
Language English
Genre(s) Novel
Publisher The Viking Press-James Lloyd
Publication date 1939
Media type Print (Hardcover & Paperback)
ISBN 0143039431
This article is about the novel. For other uses, see Grapes of Wrath (disambiguation).

The Grapes of Wrath is a novel published in 1939 and written by John Steinbeck, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature. It is frequently read in high school and college literature classes. A celebrated Hollywood film version, starring Henry Fonda and directed by John Ford, was made in 1940; however, the endings of the book and the movie differ greatly.

Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath at his home, 16250 Greenwood Lane, in what is now Monte Sereno, California. Set during the Great Depression, the novel focuses on a poor family of sharecroppers, the Joads, driven from their home by drought, economic hardship, and changes in the agriculture industry. In a nearly hopeless situation, they set out for California's Central Valley along with thousands of other "Okies" in search of land, jobs, and dignity. The novel is meant to emphasize the need for cooperative, as opposed to individualistic, solutions to social problems brought about by the mechanization of agriculture and the Dust Bowl drought.[citation needed]

Contents

[edit] Plot summary

The narrative begins from Tom Joad's point of view just after he is paroled from prison after serving four years for manslaughter. On his journey home, he meets a preacher, Jim Casy, whom he remembers from his childhood, and the two travel together. When they arrive at his childhood farm home, they find it deserted. Disconcerted and confused, he and Casy go to his Uncle John's home nearby where he finds his family loading a Hudson truck with what remains of their possessions; the crops were destroyed in the Dust Bowl and as a result, the family had to default on their loans. With their farm repossessed, the Joads seek solace in hope; hope inscribed on the handbills which are distributed everywhere in Oklahoma, describing the beautiful and fruitful country of California and high pay to be had in that state. The Joads, along with Jim Casy, are seduced by this advertising and invest everything they have into the journey. Although leaving Oklahoma would be breaking parole, Tom decides that it is a risk, albeit minimal, that he has to take.

While en route, they discover that all of the roads and the highways are saturated with other families who are also making the same trek, ensnared by the same promise. As the Joads continue on their journey and hear many stories from others, some coming from California, they are forced to confront the possibility that their prospects may not be what they hoped. This realization, supported by the deaths of Grandpa and Grandma and the departure of Noah (the eldest Joad son) and Connie (the husband of the pregnant Joad daughter, Rose of Sharon), is forced from their thoughts: they must go on because they have no choice--there is nothing remaining for them in Oklahoma.

Upon arrival, they find little hope of finding a decent wage, as there is an oversupply of labor, lack of rights, and the big corporate farmers are in collusion. The tragedy lies in the simplicity and impossibility of their dream: a house, a family, and a steady job. A gleam of hope is presented by Weedpatch, the clean, warm camps operated by the Resettlement Administration, a New Deal agency that tried to help the migrants, but there is not enough money and space to care for all of the needy.

In response to the exploitation of laborers, the workers begin to join unions. The surviving members of the family unknowingly work as strikebreakers on an orchard involved in a strike that eventually turns violent, killing the preacher Casy and forcing Tom Joad to kill again and become a fugitive. He bids farewell to his mother, promising that no matter where he runs, he will be a tireless advocate for the oppressed. Rose of Sharon's baby is stillborn; however, Ma Joad remains steadfast and forces the family through the bereavement. In the end, Rose of Sharon commits the only act in the book that is not futile: she breast feeds a starving man, still trying to show hope in humanity after her own negative experience. This final act is said to illustrate the spontaneous mutual sharing that will lead to a new awareness of collective values.

[edit] Characters

  • Tom Joad — protagonist of the story; the Joad family's second son, named for his father.
  • Ma Joad — matriarch who tries to hold the family together. Her given name is never learned; it is suggested that her maiden name was Hazlett.
  • Pa Joad - patriarch, also named Tom.
  • Uncle John - older brother of Pa Joad, feels responsible for the death of his young wife years before when he ignored her pleas for doctor. He tries to repress "sins" such as drinking, then fulfills them with gross excesses like binge drinking.
  • Jim Casy — a preacher who loses his faith after committing fornication numerous times.
  • Al Joad — the second youngest son who cares mainly for cars and girls; looks up to Tom, but begins to find his own way. Over the book's course he gradually matures and learns responsibility.
  • Rose of Sharon Rivers ("Rosasharn") — impractical, immature daughter who develops as the novel progresses and grows to become a mature woman. She symbolizes regrowth when she helps the starving stranger (see also Roman Charity, works of art based on the legend of a daughter as wet nurse to a dying father). Pregnant in the beginning of the novel, delivers a stillborn baby, probably as a result of malnutrition.
  • Connie Rivers - Rose of Sharon's husband. Very young, and overwhelmed by the responsibilities of marriage and impending fatherhood, he eventually abandons her.
  • Noah Joad — the oldest son who is the first to willingly leave the family. Injured at birth, described as "strange", he may be slightly mentally handicapped or autistic.
  • Grandpa Joad - Tom's grandfather who is the first to express desire to stay in Oklahoma. He is drugged, and subsequently dies as a result of this. Symbolically, it is due to his spirit staying at the farm.
  • Grandma Joad - The religious wife of Grandpa Joad, seems to lose will to live (and consequently dies) after her husband's death.
  • Ruthie Joad - One of the younger children. She and Winfield get along well.
  • Winfield Joad - The youngest male in the family.

[edit] Title

Steinbeck had unusual difficulty devising a title for his novel. "The Grapes of Wrath", suggested by his wife, Carol Steinbeck, was deemed more suitable than anything the author could come up with. The title is a reference to the Battle Hymn of the Republic, by Julia Ward Howe:

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.

These lyrics refer, in turn, to the biblical passage Revelation 14:19-20, an apocalyptic appeal to divine justice and deliverance from oppression in the final judgment.

And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs.

As might be expected, the image invoked by the title serves as a crucial symbol in the development of both the plot and the novel's greater thematic concerns: From the terrible winepress of Dust Bowl oppression will come terrible wrath but also the deliverance of workers through their cooperation.

[edit] Major Symbols

The turtle in Chapter 3 is a metaphor for the working class farmers whose struggles are recounted in the novel. The dangers posed to the turtle are those of modernity and business: the intrusion of cars and the building of highways endangers the turtle, and the truck that strikes the turtle is a symbol of big business and commerce. The struggling of the turtle also evokes the workings of narratives in general, since the trajectory of the turtle mimicks the trajectory of the novel: moments of action and pauses, slow process, peripetias. This land turtle becomes a proleptic device for the following chapters.

The turtle also is a biological organism in conflict with an increasingly mechanized environment, and Steinbeck's Joad family represent an answer to problems from the biological perspective. Rose of Sharon's pregnancy holds the promise of a new beginning which is broken when she delivers a stillborn baby. However, the family moves boldly and gracefully forward, rather than slipping into despair, and the novel ends in hope, albeit again with a fundamentally biological note, as a starving man is breast-fed to keep him alive.

There are numerous Judeo-Christian symbols throughout the novel. The Joad Family, like the Israelites, are homeless and persecuted people looking for the promised land. Jim Casy can be viewed as a symbol of Jesus Christ, who began his mission after a period of solitude in the wilderness. When the group first leaves for their journey West, there are thirteen of them, representing Jesus Christ and the twelve apostles. Like Jesus, Jim offers himself as the sacrifice to save his people. Jim's last words to the man who murdered him was: "Listen, you fellas don' know what you're doing," similar to Jesus's "Father forgive them; they know not what they do." Tom becomes Jim's disciple after his death.

A great flood at the end of the novel is related in the Bible as the story of Noah and the Great Flood. A flood symbolizes uncontained water, which has gone beyond the basic boundary between the earth and water. Floods also symbolize the end of one cycle of time and the beginning of a new cycle of time. Therefore, a flood symbolizes both death and regenerative birth at the same time. The image in which Uncle John disposes of the stillborn baby recalls Moses being sent down the Nile River, suggesting that the family, like the Hebrews in Egypt, will be delivered from the slavery of its present circumstances.

[edit] Critical reception

At the time of publication, Steinbeck's novel "was a phenomenon on the scale of a national event. It was publicly banned and burned by citizens, it was debated on national radio hook-ups; but above all, it was read." [1] Steinbeck scholar John Timmerman sums up the book's impact: "The Grapes of Wrath may well be the most thoroughly discussed novel - in criticism, reviews, and college classrooms - of twentieth century American literature." Part of its impact stemmed from its passionate depiction of the plight of the poor, and in fact, many of Steinbeck's contemporaries attacked his social and political views. Bryan Cordyack writes, "Steinbeck was attacked as a propagandist and a socialist from both the left and the right of the political spectrum. The most fervent of these attacks came from the Associated Farmers of California; they were displeased with the book's depiction of California farmers' attitudes and conduct toward the migrants. They denounced the book as a 'pack of lies' and labeled it 'communist propaganda'."[2] However, although Steinbeck was accused of exaggeration of the camp conditions to make a political point, in fact he had done the opposite, underplaying the conditions that he well knew were worse than the novel describes [1] because he felt exact description would have gotten in the way of his story. Furthermore, there are several references to socialist politics and questions which appear in the John Ford film of 1940 which do not appear in the novel, which is less political in its terminology and interests.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was an early advocate for addressing the plight of those featured in the book.

In 1962, the Nobel Prize committee cited Grapes of Wrath as a "great work" and as one of the committee's main reasons for granting Steinbeck the Nobel Prize for Literature.[3]

[edit] In popular culture

[edit] Adaptations for film, television, theatre, and opera

1940 film adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath
1940 film adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath

[edit] Music

[edit] See also

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Peter Lisca, The Wide World of John Steinbeck
  2. ^ Cordyack, Brian. 20th-Century American Bestsellers: John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath. Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Retrieved on 2007-02-18.
  3. ^ Osterling, Anders. Nobel Prize in Literature 1962 - Presentation Speech. Retrieved on 2007-02-18.
  4. ^ Internet Broadway Database: The Grapes of Wrath Production Credits
  5. ^ The Grapes of Wrath (1991) (TV)
  6. ^ Michael Anthony, "'Grapes' is a sweet, juicy production," Minneapolis Star Tribune, 2/12/2007

[edit] References

  • Gregory, James N. "Dust Bowl Legacies: the Okie Impact on California, 1939-1989." California History 1989 68(3): 74-85. Issn: 0162-2897
  • Saxton, Alexander. "In Dubious Battle: Looking Backward." Pacific Historical Review 2004 73(2): 249-262. Issn: 0030-8684 Fulltext: online at Swetswise, Ingenta, Ebsco
  • Sobchack, Vivian C. "The Grapes of Wrath (1940): Thematic Emphasis Through Visual Style." American Quarterly 1979 31(5): 596-615. Issn: 0003-0678 Fulltext: in Jstor. Discusses the visual style of John Ford's cinematic adaptation of the novel. Usually the movie is examined in terms of its literary roots or its social protest. But the imagery of the film reveals the important theme of the Joad family's coherence. The movie shows the family in closeups, cramped in small spaces on a cluttered screen, isolated from the land and their surroundings. Dim lighting helps abstract the Joad family from the reality of Dust Bowl migrants. The film's emotional and aesthetic power comes from its generalized quality attained through this visual style.
  • Windschuttle, Keith. "Steinbeck's Myth of the Okies". The New Criterion, Vol. 20, No. 10, June 2002.
  • Zirakzadeh, Cyrus Ernesto. "John Steinbeck on the Political Capacities of Everyday Folk: Moms, Reds, and Ma Joad's Revolt." Polity 2004 36(4): 595-618. Issn: 0032-3497

[edit] External links

Awards
Preceded by
The Yearling
by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings		 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel
1940		 Succeeded by
1941: no award given
1942:In This Our Life
by Ellen Glasgow
v • d • e
Works by John Steinbeck
Novels:
Non-fiction:
Short stories:
"The Chrysanthemums" • "The White Quail" • "Flight" • "The Snake" • "Breakfast" • "The Raid" • "The Harness" • "The Vigilante" • "Johnny Bear" • "Red Pony" • "The Murder" • "Saint Katy the Virgin"
Short story collections: