The Grapes of Wrath

In this novel about Oklahoma farmers forced by the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression to seek a new life for themselves as migrant laborers in California, John Steinbeck may well have written the Great American Novel. "The Grapes of Wrath" is the story of the Joad family, but it's also the story of a people on the move, a nation in crisis, and humanity in its extremes of greed and goodness. The first quarter of the novel tells of young Tom Joad's homecoming after several years in prison for killing a man in a drunken brawl. Contact with his family has been minimal over the years, and he looks forward to seeing his parents, grandparents, and siblings again - but the house is empty, obviously abandoned, like so many others in this land where a combination of drought and poor agricultural techniques has resulted in failure and foreclosure on countless family farms. Fortunately, Tom learns from a neighbor that his family has gone over to his uncle's place, and he arrives there just in time to join them on their way to California, where they've been told there's plenty of work in the state's lush Central Valley. The second quarter of the novel is the story of the Joads' arduous journey west on Route 66, a trip distinguished by breakdowns, death, and intimations by those who have been there that California may be something less than the paradise they've been led to imagine. The final half of the novel follows the Joads after they arrive in California, only to discover that it's possible to starve even in a land of plenty as too many would-be workers are forced to compete for available jobs by accepting wages barely sufficient to buy enough food from one day to the next. The novel ends with one of the most stunning and affecting scenes you'll ever read, and although nothing at all is resolved, the story feels complete. The structure of the novel underscores Steinbeck's creation of the Joads as the human face of a social crisis. Long chapters that advance the plot alternate with short chapters in which the Joads are never mentioned, in which Steinbeck's richly poetic prose establish the physical and moral setting of his work: the conditions leading to the Dust Bowl, the loss of a way of life, the journey to a new beginning, and the disillusionment and growing anger of the migrants - all on a massive scale. These short, poignant chapters are as beautiful, captivating, and necessary as the story chapters, as they provide context and grant a kind of holy universality to the Joads' experiences. Steinbeck's writing is raw, earthy, and viscerally powerful. This is realism at its finest: full of small, telling details, and at times casually vulgar, not for shock value but because life itself is casually vulgar. I was about 13 the first time I read this novel, and the blunt honesty of the writing was a bit much for my somewhat sheltered mind; I remember feeling uncomfortable when an old man reached into his pants and "contentedly scratched under the testicles," as that wasn't a word I was used to seeing in print, at least outside of biology texts. I loved the background chapters but found the Joad chapters distasteful for the first hundred pages or so, when I finally allowed the vivid immediacy of Steinbeck's style to make the characters real for me. As an adult, I have no such difficulties and am able to appreciate the masterful style and rich characterizations immediately. This is a mature novel, about people too crassly human to elicit our pity, but too warmly human not to elicit our compassion. I must admit that as a native Californian, I feel a special connection with this novel. For most of my life I lived just a few blocks away from the old Route 66 (although farther west than the point where the Joads left it to go north). Several of my husband's children live in the Central Valley, around places Steinbeck mentions by name. However, Steinbeck's skill is such that even if you've never been there, you'll close this novel feeling as though you had. This is a novel every American should read - indeed, everyone interested in what it means to be human in trying times. These days more than ever we need this book, we need this reminder of the values of proud self-sufficiency and fierce decency, for it is when we stop pulling, and pulling together, that we lose our way.

It quite paradoxical and embarrassing how I became known about Grapes of Wrath. I was introduced to Grapes of Wrath from a youtube clip of Louis C.K. who is stand-up comedian. In this specific video clip Louis makes a farcical argument that all men love women's breasts. Regarding the book, he says "I don't want to ruin the book for you, but you should have read the book by now. If you read the book, Grapes of Wrath, that's how it ends. With an old dying man sucking milk out of pretty young girl's boobs. And then the book is over. And you are like Geez... What happened at the end there? There is no other book in that genre -Dense historic classic that ends with weird ‘porny’ paragraph. We [men] love breasts" Then I bethought myself of reasons to read this book. First, as an immigrant American, I have duty to know and appreciate History of the Great Depression. Second, I already knew the book will end with an old dying man sucking milk out of a pretty young girl. I have to disclose that the latter was a stronger motivation for me to purchase this very book. Third, I desired to know what let up to such an ending. Fourth, is the curiosity in that how such a book of pornographic content has become an American Classic quintessential to that epoch. Whichever the motivation was – either more perverted content or curiosity – was I glad that it made me purchase the book and commit myself to read this thick book cover to cover. The story is about a family. It is people's story with whom you will smile, laugh, frown, and cry together. Each character is very special in their own ways. I felt the deepest connections with each one than any other books I had read thusly, even though I had had nothing in common with these characters. I grew up in a different country; I lived all my life in urban surroundings; I knew nothing about farming; I had never experienced hunger, poverty, or famine of any sort; I had never encountered any inhuman treatment from others. I drove cross country twice from east to west. Even then my experience was very different than that of the Joad's family. I found myself fraught with anger for the family throughout their journey to West and then their journey to happiness and stabilization (living like a normal family). The book is very straight forward. It shows from the beginning that the family won't ever reach to what they are look for, all of which are jobs, house, and food. Nothing goes right for them. The family was told on multiple times that bright expectations California are false -- an illusion created by greedy farm owners. The family presses on with hope that everything would work out. They did not lose hope when the grandpa, grandma died in a horrible way; Connie ran away; The preacher was arrested and died; multiple occasions that the truck broke down; they ran out of food to eat; they were treated inhumanly; they were underpaid; Tom was wanted again for murder; Rose of Sharon had a stillborn baby. The book shows sad political and societal background and injustice towards migrant farmers during the great depression through the Joad's family. Is the book just valuable because it contains the historic accounts of reality during the Great Depression? I do not love this book because it has the historic value to it, of which, however, I enjoyed. Nonetheless, I love this book because this book is all about hope. Through the story of the Joad family, I learned that I could hope no matter what situation in which I find myself, and I can always hope more. The ending of the book wherein the dying old man feeds on Rose of Sharon's breastmilk with her smiling is not "porny". Rather is it a “hopy”. The hope the family has been dragging on goes on and spreads onward. The book is 464 pages. Has the book been thicker and the story went on further, the family would have still had that hope which helped them to continue on. Maybe that's the same hope as the hope that the poor were able to survive with during the Great Depression in real life, and the author just wanted to capture that in his book.

I owned a copy of this book for probably 25 years now. Finally got around to reading it. I wish I’d read it sooner. So much struggle, despair, hope, and humanity. The brutality and beauty are counterbalanced with such defenses and masterful storytelling. Steinbeck spins an enthralling vine.

Was a good book. The imagery that Steinbeck painted of a Depression era share cropper family that was forced out was heartbreaking and vivid. This novel gave a slight Cian of what so many people went through during the dust bowl into the Great Depression. The struggles they had to face just to survive and find work.

With the COVID-19 pandemic in the background, I have been trying to think of how all the social orders have been upset and what the post pandemic world will look like. In parallel, I have been revisiting some fiction I read when I was younger. The whole thing has made me more distractible and narrowed my bandwidth, but I started Piketty’s new book the week it came out, but the problem was that it coincided with the rise of the pandemic into full blow consciousness of something that was happening here. All of the pre-pandemic economic texts will also have to be evaluated with the lens of the pandemic. And we still are in the process of whatever it might be. It looked initially that there might be a sense of solidarity that grew out of this, but it soon has devolved that the best we can do is survive in spite of all those who would want us to not survive. We have to hope that the institutions are not too degraded. It has made me more melancholy, and this is most likely not helped by my choices of fiction to get through all time at home. I started with Camus’s the Plague and have been reading the Grapes of Wrath. Camus brought to mind the need for survival, and how capricious and random that survival is. We can do what we can to limit our exposure, but the plague comes for us all. Steinbeck has in many ways felt more relevant than our Algerian friend since what the Grapes of Wrath is about first and foremost is the death of the American Dream in two different senses. In the first sense, it is about community and the sense of place you have by growing crops on your land and losing that to the banks and other forces out of your control but then it is also about the false Edens that we are presented with. California of the Joads was supposed to be a place that they would get to at the end of the road and be able to eat grapes falling at them from the left and right. But there is no garden of Eden in California or elsewhere. What the Joads find is hundreds of thousands of people just like them, wanting to do work and everyone else in the same boat. The people thus fight for scraps and sheer survival. But we also see the attitude of the California natives, themselves only a generation or two removed from their own migration. They hate the Okies. They hate the Okies because their suffering shows in stark light the immiseration that their own lifestyles depend on to be supported. There’s hate for the outsiders going way back in America. Their poverty brings us disgust and hate because we do not admit to ourselves that we are very close to having that suffering brought upon us. Steinbeck has a character say that he is able to live on fifteen dollars a day, then what is stopping the bosses from offering an Okie twelve dollars an hour? The worry about the race to the bottom is real. This does not happen in a vacuum though. We see it today not just in anti-Hispanic racism, but also the urge to open the economy quickly. It is not about the need to work, but the desire to increase the suffering of those seen as lesser. If you are poor or a minority or working class in the service industry, your humanity is discounted by overweight people in shiny late model Ford pickup trucks. This is how it always has been. If you look at macro models that have examined class, the implication is that individual militancy is destructive. In Grapes of Wrath, there is a scene where a labor contractor comes into an impromptu camping site where a lot of families are gathered on the edge of a town, colloquially called a “Hooverville”. The contractor tells the assembled mass that there is work and they should all come. One of the men stands up and asks to sigh a contract for promise of work and a set pay rate, asking for his basic rights as a man to be respected. Then the contractor goes back to the car and a deputy sheriff comes out and is prepared to arrest the man who stood up for his rights if ever so briefly. Steinbeck wrote fiction but the scene made me think of all those scenes in labor history that do not make the pages of the history books that are taught in school — from Haymarket Square to Ludlow Colorado. What is a common denominator in these situations is that agents of the state either directly took part or were neutral as the Rockefeller or Carnegie sent thugs at workers who stood up for their rights? The bias of the state towards capital was not just in the past. More recent research shows that you only get your way in the statehouse or in Washington if your preferences align with those of the rich. There may be direct influence because of need of politicians to keep their jobs thus the money spigot needs to stay turned on, or it may simply be affinity of those in power to either be of the upper classes or to want to be part of that crew sometime. We live in a democracy but are ruled by millionaires. Simultaneously to this, we have seen demonization of minorities to an ongoing propaganda campaign to make sure people do not look at structural factors but remain atomized. Success or failure in America is seen as a personal and moral judgment on the person and the rules of the game that are being played are ignored. As Warren Buffet has said, there is a class war in America, and his class is winning. What is to be done then? We see in economic models from Goodwin, Beveridge, Marx, Robinson, and Blanchard that show individual militancy either will just increase inflation like Blanchard or will decrease the average rate of employment like Goodwin. Working as an individual or a singular bargaining unit or setting up a cooperative organization does not transcend the logic of capitalism because you are still working under these rules. Ultimately if we remain in thrall of capitalism as an economic system we need to go back to the words Marx and Engels wrote in 1848, “Workers of all lands unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains”. The question then comes if we can accomplish all that, so we end up with the best solution in the game theoretic outcome Mehrling outlines, why is the working class happy to allow the existence of a capitalist class? It sets the stage for a move beyond these models and into a post capitalism. The problem is in creating that worker unification. So many people of the working class have bought into the idea that the current system is the best of all possible systems, even if they are directly victimized by the system. It takes an act of political imagination to move beyond the existing ideology and into one where they can take power. In America it ranges from an allegiance to the state since the idea of America has been so successfully wedded to the existing economic structure, and combined with a distrust of all bureaucracies that the idea of a worker organization would just relocate all the bad things about the existing state. This is where I get back to my melancholy. The Okies in California were white Americans, and they were still able to be seen as an other. They were outsiders by creation, and by necessity as in crisis there was an us and a them — artificial identities that became very real. We are in the midst of our own crisis, one making the last one seem quaint. From the ashes of that one rose the Tea Party and Trumpism in America. I know what needs to be done, but I don’t know how to make it so, and that’s what frightens me, as destruction and hate seem to be much easier than solidarity and building a new world. This is especially true when the state is not neutral

Grapes of Wrath is historical work of fiction. Covering the migration of tens of thousands of tenant farmers from the mid-west to the West of America. The book is half-fiction and half historical narrative. Amazing and absorbing are two words that initially come to mind when recalling the story. We follow the Joads, a family of tenant farmers, from Oklahoma to California. The mid west has become a dust bowl and the crops are performing badly. The land owners are heavily indebted to the banks who call in their loans. The land owners have to bow as industrialization thunders down on them and tractors and massive earth moving machines plow and turn the land. The tenant farmers are evicted and slowly but surely, reality sets in. They have nothing but each other. All the work is out west they hear. Our story starts as they point the old jalopy west and set off for better days. Steinbeck writes the story from 3rd person perspective and writes using the vernacular one would hear if one were a fly on the wall. Only becomes On'y, something becomes sumptin, every becomes ever', family becomes fambly. After reading for a while, the voice in your head takes on a Southern drawl as you read over the exchanges of the family. Conversation is scant yet, succinct. Articulation is nonexistent but the emotion leaps from the page. It truly is amazing the amount of feeling Steinbeck manages to get across to the reader. You truly are in the wagon, tents, camps, fields with the Joads as their personal Odyssey develops. There are 30 chapters and every other one is a historical perspective that Steinbeck uses to color in the hurdles and forces working against the migrants who were headed West. These folks were treated with contempt, condescension, abuse, left to starve and physically abused by law-enforcement yet, they continued on their way with hope. The hope was eroding from within yet, onwards they went. Tight family units looking out for each other and helping others along the way. The characters all add their "something" to the story. One of the more interesting ones, for me, was the character Casey. Casey, an ex-preacher, is somewhat like the phone in the old movies. Someone would grab the phone and use it to fill in some parts of the movie. Casey has that role in some places. He's a thinker and we find him thinking and explaining things to the Joads as they come to terms with their predicament. This work is a classic, no two ways about it. It's an American Odyssey during the great depression. Down home, heart of the Nation people uprooted by progress and forced to adapt to a world that didn't want them. Excellent work. 6 stars.

This novel takes its place among the five finest novels I have ever read: the others being "Crossing to Safety"by Wallace Stegner, Tolstoy's "War and Peace", "Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson and Towles"A Gentleman in Moscow". It is shame that it was not until my 81st year that I picked it up. I was moved to do this by my recent reading and great admiration of Steinbeck's "East of Eden" and Steinbeck's letters which constitute a virtual biography of his life. Of all these five novels, however, "Grapes of Wrath" is the one that has most deeply penetrated my life. For many reasons. But above all because I came to know and feel the characters more intimately and viscerally and emotionally than inany other book I have ever read. I understand what Norman Mailer meant in writing of "Steinbeck's marvelous and ironic sense of compassion…daring all the time to go up to the very abyss of offering more feeling than the reader can accept." Again and again, that is how I felt, hanging on every word and phrase, wondering, worrying about what comes next. It did not happen by accident. Steinbeck records this in the midst of writing the book: "Yesterday it seemed to me that the people were coming to life. I hope so. These people must be intensely alive the whole time". The whole time. Exactly. No false notes.Through detailed depiction of the environment, layer upon layer, in cinema-like detail, through the development of the looks, gestures and clothes of every character and through dialogue, authentic and colloquial, matched to the individual, I am PRESENT. I am THERE. Steinbeck greatly respects his theme, the magnitude of the undertaking: "I went over the whole of the book in my head—fixed on the last scene, huge and symbolic (and I would add brave and unexpected), toward which the whole story moves. And that was a good thing, for it was a re-understanding of the dignity of the effort and mightiness of the theme. I feel very small and inadequate and incapable but I grew again to love the story which is so much greater than I am. To love and admire the people who are so much stronger and purer and braver than I am." Such humility combined with reverence and ambition and incredibly hard work—the sources of greatness. Like many, I resonate to this story today because it presents vividly what immigrants fleeing violence and life-threatening poverty face today. And the homeless too. It dramatizes how many will take advantage of them, some will castigate them as being dirty and threatening and dangerous, and a few generous souls will step forward as Good Saviors to try to help them on their journey. For me, this story cries out for individual and collective action today. We need the equivalent of "Grapes of Wrath" today to reveal viscerally and authentically the challenge that hundreds of thousands of threatened women, men and children face today as they seek safety and freedom for their families. In the broadest sense, this novel presents the urgent need for social justice, understanding and compassion so needed in our world today. As one commentator observed, it is also at once an elegy and a challenge to live in harmony with the earth. Hope and valor present themselves repeatedly in this magnificent novel, but never, ever at the expense of recognizing the raw often brutal challenge of life. The ex-preacher Casy captures this combination of challenge and hope as he describes how a friend looks back on being violently jailed by vigilantes because he had tried to setup a union among exploited workers. "Anyways, you do what you can. The only thing you got to look at is that every time there is a little step forward, she may slip back a little, but she never slips clear back. You can prove that and that makes the whole thing right. And that means they wasn't no waste even it seemed like they was." No matter what, we must continue on. Recalling one of my favorite texts the Talmud: "You are not required to complete the work, but nether are you free to desist from it." Steinbeck honors the uniqueness and complexity of every individual's life but also the strength to be drawn in being part of something bigger than oneself, ones family above all and the whole of humanity beyond. It is a noble calling. One worthy of our best effort.

I pushed myself to finish this book because I really wanted to get through it. I liked it, didn’t love it. I just wanted to get it over with because it was so depressing. I wanted to learn more about the period of history – the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, tenant farmers, the exodus to California. Yes, I learned about it. However, I kept reflecting on the Ken Burns documentary titled “The Dust Bowl” and learned more from that documentary. Yes, it is a different medium, but I can’t help but make the comparison. I had a really hard time with the colloquial language. I can’t believe the Joads said “fambly” for family. There are many more examples. The language may have been “authentic,” in John Steinbeck’s eyes, but it made it harder to read. The novel is very dark and depressing. I knew it would be. I don’t expect a happy ending to every novel, but this one was 100% grim. Sheer despair, hunger, no work, no money, horrible living conditions, illness, death, flooding, hopelessness. Out of 350-500,000 people who left Oklahoma, many of them did end up having good lives in California. And they were not all from Oklahoma. I know, that wasn’t Steinbeck’s point in writing the novel, but it doesn’t give a clear picture. I’ve read a LOT of historical fiction: WWI, WWII, the Pioneers, Hawaii, Ireland, and more. Today’s writers are much more interesting and engaging. I wanted to read a classic and now I’ve done it.

This is a deeply moving and beautifully written novel. The story is emotional, thought-provoking, and gives a powerful look at hardship, family, and hope. Even though it was written many years ago, its themes still feel relevant today. A classic that stays with you long after you finish reading.

Basic Amazon print, the pixels of the cover art are visible because it is just copy pasted......

A experiência de leitura nessa edição é demais, começando pela introdução maravilhosa do Robert Demmot, um estudioso da obra de Steinbeck, que também é responsável pelas notas. O prefácio traz a contextualização e os desdobramentos do impacto da obra na história norte-americana, além de uma análise do autor, de suas obras e muitas dicas sobre filmes, documentários, músicas (há uma canção do Bon Dylan para um dos personagens) e até de uma paródia da revista Mad. Robert Demmot também é responsável pelas notas de rodapé, que são bem importantes nessa obra, pois há bastante gíria e o autor utiliza a forma coloquial da fala da região em sua escrita.

Steinbeck at his best. this novel gives a good glimpse as to what has passed, and what is coming again. a good look at what happend during the first American depression. good reading for people to know what they are in for.

Riletto in lingua originale dopo che non ero riuscito a finirlo quasi 60 anni fa in versione tradotta. La storia di disperazione e speranza di questa famiglia che va a Ovest oggi è tragicamente attuale vedendo un intero continente che cerca un futuro a Nord. Si fa fatica a finirlo, la disperazione non finisce mai. Poi il colpo di genio, nelle ultime righe. Da leggere, come tutti i libri di Steinbeck, d'altra parte.