“To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth” (opening lines)
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck’s epic story of a Dust Bowl migrant family, celebrated its 80th anniversary this year. The novel was originally born out of a series of articles entitled “The Harvest Gypsies” published in the The San Francisco News, a former working-class Bay Area rag. The series was coupled with now-famous photographs from Dorothea Lange, including an often-cited photograph of a migrant woman located in Nipomo, CA (today an elementary school in Lange’s name stands in Nipomo). Steinbeck was in his 30s at the time of writing “The Harvest Gypsies” articles.
The Grapes of Wrath is rife with crass, working-class dialogue and local color. It is, at once, an epic story of the American landscape, yet it is also a sentimental tragedy with overtly political themes. The Grapes of Wrath contains the seed of the illusory westward ramblings of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road as well as the heart-wrenching call to action found in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. It is, on the surface, a work of partisan advocacy for the ill-treated and overlooked American migrant family. The novel employs an unusual and experimental narrative technique: rather than continuing the linear story of the Joad family, every other chapter paints a broad picture of the era through a panoramic montage. The striking narrative device, borrowed from John Dos Passos’s “USA Trilogy,” offers the reader an oral history of the Dust Bowl using colloquialisms, sights, sounds, ordinary voices, and stream-of-consciousness imagery from the Dust Bowl migrant world. At his wife Carol’s suggestion, Steinbeck took the title for the novel from 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…”
The Grapes of Wrath is dedicated to Steinbeck’s tutor and researcher Tom Collins (“To Tom, who lived it”). Tom Collins ran several migrant camps in California and he wrote about his work. Steinbeck used some of Collins’s primary source research materials in The Grapes of Wrath. The book was written over a five month period (June-October 1938). Shortly after publication, the novel was banned by several organizations, including the Associated Farmers of California, as well as the Soviet Union (ironically for appearing to show destitute Americans who could nevertheless purchase a car in the capitalist system). Some communities either banned or burned the book, meanwhile the FBI began surveilling John Steinbeck. Farming companies in Kern County, California were vocally opposed to Steinbeck’s portrayal of oppressive farmers and landowners in the novel. In August 1939, the Board of Supervisors of Kern County voted to ban The Grapes of Wrath from county libraries and schools. The controversy in Kern County divided laborers and landowners along political lines, and it eventually helped to create the so-called “Library Bill of Rights” to protect the rights of readers to borrow controversial books. Despite the controversy, some influential figures came to the defense of Steinbeck, including fellow Pulitzer-Prize winner Pearl S. Buck, as well as First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
The honor of being the best-selling book of 1940 brought with it an urgent demand for a movie. Producer Darryl Zanuck quickly acquired the rights to the story for 20th Century Fox and John Ford soon hastily put the film together in 1940. Despite it being somewhat rushed through production, The Grapes of Wrath is a wonderful film that has continued to be well-celebrated (read my review of the film here). Reportedly, Steinbeck loved Henry Fonda’s portrayal of Tom Joad. Woody Guthrie later recorded his homage to Steinbeck in his musical defense of the Okies in “The Ballad of Tom Joad” song, and Bruce Springsteen wrote his own song to honor the Dust Bowl with “The Ghost of Tom Joad” (it was later covered in a funk-metal-hip-hop version by Rage Against The Machine).
Following the Civil War, vast numbers of veterans settled on farms along the great plains. Like rugged pioneers and homesteaders, they built up farms on the free land. These legions of farmers and their families – who were composed primarily of Irish, Scotch, English, and German people – became the owners and tenant farmers of Middle America.
In between 1934-1940 a significant and severe drought hit the plains. The drought, coupled with improper dry-farming practices and the introduction of new farming machinery, all caused unsafe quantities of dust to kick up. It forced thousands of families off their land. So the farmers were cast adrift. They migrated westward along the extensive two-lane highway of Route 66 (or “the mother road” as Steinbeck calls it). The road was dangerous and it took travelers through the desert all the way from the plains to the farmland of the California Central Valley. However, many migrants arrived only to find unfriendly landowners coupled with minimal job opportunities and the backdrop of the Great Depression. The newcomers were castigated as “Okies” since many came from Oklahoma, and they lived like squatters in “Hoovervilles” all over the Valley. The banks and landowners got right while the migrants lived in squalid poverty.
“The Bank – or the Company-needs-wants-insists-must have-as though the Bank or the Company were a monster, with thought and feeling, which had ensnared them” (pages 31-32)
“The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in the 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” (page 33).
In the novel, the Joad family loses all their crops in the Dust Bowl and they default on their farm loans. Their farm is repossessed by the bank and they watch their future vanish into a dust cloud. The main character is Tom Joad, a recent parolee who served four years in prison for fighting and killing a man in self-defense. Tom hitchhikes his way home and comes across a fascinating character who plays a quiet but significant role in the novel -Jim Casy, a former preacher who now wrestles with his faith. The two men discover that the Joad family has vacated their home, and are now living at their uncle’s house while planning to head west to California. Members of the family have read advertisements of California that evoke the image of a land of milk and honey, filled with jobs, orchards, vineyards, sunshine and plentiful farmland. Despite being a parolee, Tom Joad decides he will join his family and cross state lines while risking further legal trouble.
The family sets out southward from their hometown of Salisaw, Oklahoma: Tom Joad with his new companion, Jim Casy; along with Ma and Pa Joad, Grandpa and Grandma Joad; Tom Joad’s brothers Al, Noah, and Winfield; and Tom Joad’s sisters Ruthie and Rose of Sharon, who is pregnant, plus her new and young husband Connie Rivers. This whole crowd piles into the Joad family’s jalopy and heads down Route 66 toward California with a few meager dollars to their name.
Along the way, they encounter a variety of characters, while spending money sparingly, and both Grandpa and Grandma sadly pass away en route to new foreign lands. They are buried unceremoniously along the roadside. Pa quickly grows dismayed at his own inability to provide for his family, so Ma becomes the de facto leader of the Joads. They pass through a series of tent camps amidst growing rumors of hellish conditions in California and no jobs. Some migrants decide to turn back.
“Once California belonged to Mexico and its land to Mexicans, and a horde of tattered feverish Americans poured in. And such was their hunger for the land that they took the land – stole Sutter’s land, Guerrero’s land, took the grants and broke them up and growled and quarreled over them, those frantic hungry men; and they guarded with guns the land they had stolen. They put up houses and barns, they turned the earth and planted crops. And these things were possession, and possession was ownership” (page 231, opening lines of Chapter 19).
“The Spring is beautiful in California. Valleys in which fruit blossoms are fragrant pink and white waters in a shallow sea. Then the first tendrils of the grapes, swelling from the old gnarled vines, cascade down to cover the trunks. The full green hills are round and soft as breasts. And on the level vegetable lands are the mile-long rows of pale green lettuce and the spindly little cauliflowers, the gray-green unearthly artichoke plants” (page 346, opening lines of Chapter 25).
The Joads cross into California after passing though miles of desert country, and they witness a vast open valley lined with beautiful rows of orchards. ‘Surely there must be jobs here!’ However their optimism quickly vanishes. The Joads bounce around through various migrant tent camps as police come to bully the ‘Okies’ -a pejorative term used to castigate the migrant workers from Oklahoma. In one incident, Joad gets into a squabble and he is forced into hiding while his friend, Jim Casy, takes responsibility for the fight and is hauled off. The Joads quickly learn that there are no jobs in California. There are too many workers, depressed wages, and nowhere to live. However, the Joads are out of money and are growing desperate. They are confused by the anger from wealthy landowners and law enforcement. Consider how the newcomers discuss the rumors of William Randolph Hearst:
“‘They’s a fella, newspaper fella near the coast, got a million acres-‘”
Casey looked up quickly. ‘Million acres? What in the worl’ can he do with a million acres?’
‘I dunno. He jus’ got it. Runs a few cattle. Got guards ever’place to keep folks out. Rides aroun’ in a bullet-proof car. I seen pitchers of him. Fat, sof’ fella with little mean eyes an’ a mouth like a ass-hole. Scairt he’s gonna die. Got a million acres an’ scairt of dyin'” (pg 206).
Shortly after arriving in California, the Joad family quickly disintegrates. Uncle John becomes something of a drunkard, Noah leaves the family to become a fisherman, Connie Rivers abandons his pregnant wife along with the rest of the family, and at the end of the story Rose of Sharon tragically gives birth to a stillborn baby. At one point, the Joads find a home in a government camp, safe from badgering police, however the jobs dry up and unfortunately the Joads are forced to move on. They find another camp that is less desirable with no hot water, a Depression-era “Hooverville.” Miraculously, Tom encounters Jim Casy again who has pursued the life of a union organizer, but Casy is quickly killed by an officer who accuses him of being a “red” (i.e. a communist) so Tom gets into a physical altercation. The fight forces Tom to also abandon the family.
“There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange…In the sould of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage” (Chapter 25, page 349).
In the end, Tom runs away in an effort to prevent his whole family from facing equal punishment if caught. The Joads head to another dusty camp to pick cotton amidst boxcars. Meanwhile, rain comes and forces the Joads out of their meager dwelling. They take shelter at higher ground in a nearby barn where a young boy lies with an old man dying of starvation. Rose of Sharon quietly lays down and feeds the man with her breast milk –a tragic symbol of the desperate need for sustenance and care, while Rose of Sharon “smiles mysteriously.”
“Well, maybe like Casy says, a fella ain’t got a soul of his own, but on’y a piece of a big one… Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there… I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad an’ – I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folks eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build – why, I’ll be there” (page 419).
As in some of his other books, most notably Of Mice and Men, in The Grapes of Wrath Steinbeck offers a withering critique of American Horatio Alger-styled rugged individualism, a theme which has remained a prevalent idea explored throughout the Pulitzer Prize-winning novels. Steinbeck forces us to question when the message of self-reliance becomes a punitive ideology perpetrated upon ordinary people –he asks us to consider the grave injustice which has befallen the Joad family. These are not activists or radicals, complaining about their own misfortunes, but rather, the Joads are, as Clifton Fadiman of The New Yorker noted, “a people of old American stock.” They are deprived of work, a virtuous and noble activity which connects people to their home, family, and community. Their tragedy is a result of both natural and unnatural causes –by technology which has uprooted the soil, by an environmental catastrophe which has ended the possibility of farming, a collapsing economy which has bankrupted the working class, and a heartless elite class which has driven people to the point of starvation, a starvation so sever, they are desperately feeding a dying people with breastmilk like wild animals. The agony is starkly palpable, and it reminds us of two chief virtues in American society –on the one hand, the enduring strength of the working class, as it strives to overcome all obstacles, and on the other hand, the need for society to step in and care for those in need. Sometimes these two values come into conflict with one another in American society, we might call them rugged individualism versus compassionate socialism (with a lower case “s”). In many ways, this is a simplistic contrast between the contemporary political right and left. The brilliance of The Grapes of Wrath is that Steinbeck suggests both can serve the greater good when working together in harmony, and he does this by highlighting the extreme mistreatment of ordinary people like the Joad family who have been made the victim of extreme individualism in this instance.
The 1940 Pulitzer Prize Decision
In 1940, the recurring Novel Jury returned again consisting of: Jefferson B. Fletcher, Joseph W. Krutch, and Robert M. Lovett. They unanimously selected Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (despite it being “marred by certain artistic blemishes”) with a few back-up selections including Escape by Ethel Vance, To the End of the World by Helen White, Seasoned Timber by Dorothy Canfield, and Night Riders by Robert Penn Warren. In response, the Pulitzer Advisory Board mostly agreed with the selection of The Grapes of Wrath, excluding two members: Walter M. Harrison of The Daily Oklahoman and Robert Lincoln O’Brien of The Boston Herald. Mr. Harrison was concerned about the political consequences of a possibly inaccurate portrayal of migrant issues and the celebration of what appeared to him to be “smut.” In a strongly worded letter, he announced that he did not wish to elevate “the filth of the jungle to the dignity of immortal literature.” Mr. O’Brien of The Boston Herald echoed similar sentiments, citing criticisms from both The New York Times and William Randolph Hearst (who objected to his portrayal in the book, dubbing it “The Grapes of Rot”). In the end, the Steinbeck selection won out. According to Pulitzer Board Secretary, John Hohenberg (in his The Pulitzer Diaries) he noted that jury chair Joseph Wood Krutch identified The Grapes of Wrath as “the most powerful and significant of all the works submitted for our consideration.” When it was voted and approved by the Trustees of Columbia University, it was met with universal approval. Writing in The New Republic, Malcolm Crowley remarked that The Grapes of Wrath stands “very high in the category of great angry books like Uncle Tom’s Cabin that have aroused a people to fight against intolerable wrongs.”
- Joseph Wood Krutch (1893-1970) was born in Knoxville, Tennessee and studied at the University of Tennessee and Columbia University. After serving in the army, he traveled throughout Europe with a friend, poet and critic Mark Van Doren. He taught composition at Brooklyn Polytechnic and became a theater critic at The Nation where he worked for many years. Something of a pantheist, mystic, and naturalist –he penned widely read biographies of Henry David Thoreau and Samuel Johnson.
- Jefferson Butler Fletcher (1865-1946) was born in Chicago, served in the American Field Ambulance Services during World War I, and was educated at Harvard and Bowdoin College. He was a long-serving professor of Comparative Literature at Columbia University (from 1904-1939) and was considered a foremost expert on the Italian Renaissance and Dante. In his obituary in The New York Times, it was noted that he served on the Pulitzer Novel Jury for “several years.” Sadly, his son died in an automobile accident in 1926, Fletcher also had a daughter.
- Robert Morss Lovett (1870-1956) was a Bostonian who studied at Harvard. He taught literature at the University of Chicago for many years, he was associate editor of The New Republic, served as governor secretary of the Virgin Islands, and was a political activist –he was accused of being a communist by the Dies Committee which forced him out of his secretary position. He was often on the frontlines of left-leaning picket lines, and helped launch the careers of several young writers, including John Dos Passos. In later years, his wife became a close friend and associate of Jane Addams and the couple lived at Hull House for a spell.
Note: Sanora Babb (1907-2005) was a journalist who spent time working in the Dust Bowl tent camps in California. Without her knowledge, her notes were sent to John Steinbeck by her boss Tom Collins (to whom The Grapes of Wrath is dedicated). She intended to publish a novel about her experiences, until Steinbeck published The Grapes of Wrath and it became a massive critical and popular success. Her novel Whose Names Are Unknown was later published decades later at the end of Babb’s life in 2004. Is it possible that Steinbeck stole material from Sanora Babb for The Grapes of Wrath? It strikes me as unlikely, though it is worth sharing this little anecdote when considering the full picture of The Grapes of Wrath.
Regarding the context in which John Steinbeck was writing, John Hohenberg (writing in the 1970s) offers the following remarks: “John Steinbeck is scarcely considered today to be a revolutionary force in American literature. But in the 1930s, when labor organizers were appealing to the discontented in a suffering land and some of the more frightened captains of industry saw anarchy in every New Deal reform of consequence, the affluent conservatives viewed Steinbeck’s proletarian novels with a certain degree of suspicion. Although his style was graceful and engaging and although he was not afraid to apply the leavening touch of humor to his grimmest situations, he did not have a very good press on the whole. The liberal critics liked him, it is true, but their largely conservative editors had distinct reservations. His progress, therefore, was not as swift and his talent was not as quickly recognized as it should have been… “
“The Pulitzer Prize served to confirm John Steinbeck’s stature as a major American novelist. However, since he was 38 years old when he received thee award and at the high point of his productive and distinguished career, it is doubtful that the award had any particular impact on his fortunes. In fact, even though he received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1962, his best work had been done long before and The Grapes of Wrath marked his peak. It is not often that a prize dovetails so neatly with the finest work of an artist’s career, but this was what made the 1940 fiction award to The Grapes of Wrath all the more notable. Now, certainly, there was some reason to believe that the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction finally had been able to surmount the criticism that had plagued it from the outset.”
About John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. (1902-1968) was born in Salinas, CA. He was a descendent of German-American immigrants. His father worked for the County of Monterey and his mother was a school teacher. The Steinbecks were Episcopalians and young John grew up working on nearby sugar and beet ranches in the small rural community of Spreckels located in the heart of the Salinas Valley, “The Salad Bowl of America.”
Steinbeck attended Stanford University but dropped out in 1925 without a degree. He moved to New York City and worked odd jobs while trying to make it as a successful writer. When that failed, he returned to California and worked as a tour guide in Lake Tahoe, CA. There he met his first wife Carol and started a failed business producing mannequins. When their money ran out six months later, Steinbeck and Carol moved back to Pacific Grove, CA into a cottage owned by Steinbeck’s parents -Steinbeck’s family provided the young couple with significant financial support. This much-needed cushion allowed John to continue writing through the Great Depression.
During the decade of the 1930s Steinbeck had a remarkable output of extraordinary books including Tortilla Flat (1935), Of Mice and Men (1937), The Grapes of Wrath (1939) a yearlong bestseller which also won the Pulitzer. During this period, he bought a boat and befriended a man named Ed Ricketts, a Monterey-based marine biologist turned philosopher. The two became close friends and took a number of fishing trips together. Ricketts became the inspiration for a character in Cannery Row (1945).
In the 1940s, Steinbeck divorced his wife Carol and moved to the East Coast. He was then remarried to Gwyn but this marriage soon ended in divorce, as well. Steinbeck became a World War II reporter for the New York Herald Tribune -the rag of the so-called “Rockefeller Republicans” or the upper-crust East Coast Republicans. In the course of his reporting he returned home with a number of shrapnel wounds as well as psychological damage. Meanwhile Ed Ricketts tragically died in an accident in 1948. Steinbeck returned to California to be with Ricketts shortly before his untimely death. Steinbeck spent the rest of that year in a deep depression having lost his friend and second wife. In 1950 Steinbeck was married for the third time to Elaine Scott, a Hollywood stage-hand. She divorced her first husband Zachary Scott only a week before her marriage to Steinbeck. The Steinbecks lived happily together in Manhattan until John Steinbeck’s death.
He continued to write in his later years, including notable nonfiction work such as war reporting, stories of fishing trips, a remarkable account of a trip to Soviet Russia, and a highly memorable travelogue while driving across the United States. He was also a reporter on the Vietnam War. He was later criticized as a “hawk” or a supporter of the war. In 1959, Steinbeck published his magnum opus, East of Eden (1959).
In 1962, Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and in 1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He died in 1968 of heart disease and heart failure -he was a lifelong smoker. Steinbeck and his third wife are buried in the Garden of Memories Cemetery in the Salinas Valley. A famous museum now stands in Salinas and it is worth a visit for admirers of Steinbeck.
Film Adaptation:
- The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
- Director: John Ford
- Starring: Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, John Carradine, Shirley Mills, John Qualen, Eddie Quillan
Further Reading:
- Tortilla Flat (1935)
- A series of sketches about a group of paisanos in California after the end of World War I.
- Of Mice and Men (1937)
- A novella about two friends, one of whom is mentally disabled, on a California ranch.
- Cannery Row (1945)
- A novel of Monterey, California.
- The Pearl (1947)
- A novella inspired by a Mexican folk tale about pearl divers.
- East of Eden (1952)
- An epic familial saga taking place in the Salina Valley, California.
Literary Context in 1939-1940:
- Nobel Prize for Literature (1939): was awarded to Finnish writer Frans Eemil Sillanpää (1888–1964) “for his deep understanding of his country’s peasantry and the exquisite art with which he has portrayed their way of life and their relationship with Nature.” To date, he remains the only Finnish author to win the prize.
- Per Publishers Weekly, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck was the top bestseller in 1939. Other notable books on the bestseller list that year were All This, and Heaven Too by Rachel Field, Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, and The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.
- The Pocket Books mass-market paperback imprint was launched in the United States.
- Eando Binder’s story “I, Robot” first appeared in the U.S. science fiction magazine Amazing Stories.
- The Criterion, a British literary quarterly, was founded and edited by T. S. Eliot.
- W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood set sail from England for the United States.
- Raymond Chandler’s California private detective Philip Marlowe was introduced in his first full-length work of crime fiction, The Big Sleep, which reworked elements from earlier short stories.
- James Joyce’s last work, Finnegans Wake, was published in full by Faber and Faber in London.
- Mikhail Bulgakov prepares the propaganda play Batumi, to romanticize events in Joseph Stalin’s youth, while secretly working on The Master and Margarita. The project is shelved by Stalin himself once Bulgakov announces he will interview witnesses personally.
- Robert A. Heinlein’s first published short story, “Life-Line”, appeared in Astounding Science-Fiction.
- Jean-Paul Sartre was conscripted into the French Army, where he served as a meteorologist.
- Polish painter, playwright and novelist Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz commits suicide after the Soviet invasion of Poland.
- Famous Fantastic Mysteries, a pulp magazine reprinting American science fiction and fantasy, began publication in New York.
- In 1939, Frank Herbert lied about his age to get his first job as a local newspaper reporter.
- The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway was published.
- How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn was published.
- Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller was published.
- Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter was published.
- Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo was published.
- The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West was published.
Did The Right Book Win?
The Grapes of Wrath ranks among the best of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novels in my view, alongside other American classics like Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence. The Pulitzer Prize made the right decision this year.
Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. Penguin Classics, 2002.
Don’t forget the valuable Steinbeck Museum in Salinas!