THE GRAPES OF WRATH

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

Contents

Plot summary

Characters

Title

Critical reception

In popular culture

Adaptations for film, television, theatre, and opera

Music

See also

Notes

References

External links

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, who he remembers from his childhood, and the two travel together. When they arrive at Tom's childhood farm home, they find it deserted. Disconcerted, he and Casy go to his Uncle John's residence a few miles away, where he finds his family loading a truck with everything they own for a move; he learns that his family's crops were destroyed in the Dust Bowl and that they were forced to default on outstanding loans. With their farm repossessed, the Joads seek solace in hope; hope inscribed on handbills that are distributed everywhere in Oklahoma, describing the beautiful country of California and high wages to be found out west. The Joads, along with Jim Casy, are seduced by this façade 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).
En route, they discover that the roads and highways are saturated with thousands of other families making the same trek, ensnared by the same promise. As the Joads continue and hear stories from others, some coming back from California, they are forced to confront the possibility that their prospects may not be what they had 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 other choice.
Upon arrival, they find hordes of applicants for every job and little hope of finding a decent wage, because of the oversupply of labor, lack of rights, and the collusion of the big corporate farmers. 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. However, the benevolent bureaucrat Jim Rawley who manages the camp does not have 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 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.

Characters

★ Tom Joad — protagonist of the story

★ Ma Joad — matriarch who helps the family keep together

★ Pa Joad - patriarch, wishing things were simpler, like the old days

★ Jim Casy — a preacher who loses his faith after committing adultery. He represents in the book all that is holy. His initials are probably not coincidental.

★ Al Joad — the second youngest son who cares mainly for cars and girls; looks up to Tom, but begins to find his own way

★ Rose of Sharon ("Rosasharn") — impractical, selfish 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.

★ Noah Joad — the oldest son who is the first to willingly leave the family. Deformed since birth.

★ 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 consequentially dies) after her husband's death.

★ Uncle John - Tom's uncle, tends to be very charitable after he blames himself for the death of his wife. Throughout the novel he doubts his normally good nature and every once in a while loses his will and goes on a frenzy of drinking and other reckless natures.

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.

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." In the years since its publication, "positive support continues to dominate the reviews."^[2]
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.^[4]

In popular culture

Adaptations for film, television, theatre, and opera

★ A film version was produced by Darryl F. Zanuck in 1940. John Ford won the Academy Award for Directing, as did Jane Darwell for Best Supporting Actress (as Ma Joad). Other nominations were for Best Picture, Henry Fonda for Best Actor, Robert L. Simpson for Best Film Editing, Edmund H. Hansen for Best Sound Recording, and Nunnally Johnson for Best Screenplay Writing. The film has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

★ The Steppenwolf Theater Company produced a stage version of the book, adapted by Frank Galati. Gary Sinise played Tom Joad for its entire run of or 188 performances on Broadway in 1990 [2], and was shown on PBS the following year [3].

★ An opera based on the novel was co-produced by the Minnesota Opera and Utah Symphony and Opera, with music by Ricky Ian Gordon and libretto by Michael Korie. The world premiere performance of the opera was given in February 2007, to favorable local reviews.^[5]

Music

★ In 1940 Woody Guthrie recorded a ballad called "Tom Joad". This ballad, set to the tune of "John Hardy", summarizes the plot of the book/movie. It was so long that it had to be recorded in two parts. Woody wrote the song after seeing the movie, which he described as the 'best cussed pitcher I ever seen'.

★ In 1995, Bruce Springsteen released an album entitled ''The Ghost of Tom Joad'' featuring a song of the same name. This song was covered by Rage Against the Machine and most recently by José González of Junip.

★ The English Progressive Rock band Camel recorded an album ''Dust and Dreams'' (1991) inspired by The Grapes of Wrath.

★ On Pink Floyd's album ''A Momentary Lapse of Reason'', the opening lines for the song "Sorrow" are paraphrased from the beginning of a chapter in ''The Grapes of Wrath'': "Sweet smell of a great sorrow lies over the land."

★ The punk rock band Bad Religion included a song called "Grains of Wrath" on their 2007 full-length New Maps Of Hell.[4]

See also

★ T.C. Boyle's ''The Tortilla Curtain'' (1995), a novel with similar subject matter

Notes

1. Peter Lisca, The Wide World of John Steinbeck
2. 20th-Century American Bestsellers: John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
3. 20th-Century American Bestsellers: John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
4. Nobel Prize in Literature 1962 - Presentation Speech
5. Michael Anthony, "'Grapes' is a sweet, juicy production," Minneapolis Star Tribune, 2/12/2007

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

External links

★ Film Study of "The Grapes of Wrath": Lesson plan from New Deal Network

★ Death in the Dust: John Steinbeck's first-person account of the conditions he observed at a California squatter's camp.

★ Woody Guthrie's ''Tom Joad''

★ Photos of the first edition of The Grapes of Wrath

★ Study resource for ''Grapes of Wrath''