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The Grapes of Wrath
First edition cover
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 and Paperback)
Pages	619
OCLC Number	289946

The Grapes of Wrath is a novel published in 1939 and written by John Steinbeck, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. Set during the Great Depression, the novel focuses on a poor family of sharecroppers, the Joads, driven from their Oklahoma 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 Grapes of Wrath is frequently read in American high school and college literature classes. A celebrated Hollywood film version, starring Henry Fonda and directed by John Ford, was made in 1940; the endings of the book and the movie differ greatly.

Plot

The narrative begins just after Tom Joad is paroled from prison for homicide. On his journey home, he meets a now-former 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 converted 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 cling to hope, mostly in the form of handbills distributed everywhere in Oklahoma, describing the fruitful country of California and the high pay to be had in that state. The Joads 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 worth taking. Casy joins the family as well.

Going west on Route 66, the Joad family discovers that the road is saturated with other families making the same trek, ensnared by the same promise. In makeshift camps, they hear many stories from others, some coming back from California, and are forced to confront the possibility that their prospects may not be what they hoped. Along the road, Grandpa dies and is buried in the camp; Grandma dies close to the California state line, both Noah (the eldest Joad son) and Connie (the husband of the pregnant Joad daughter, Rose of Sharon) split from the family; the remaining members, led by Ma, realize they have no choice but to go on, as there is nothing remaining for them in Oklahoma.

Upon arrival, they find little hope of making a decent wage, as there is an oversupply of labor and a lack of rights, and the big corporate farmers are in collusion, while smaller farmers are suffering from collapsing prices. A gleam of hope is presented at Weedpatch Camp, one of the clean, utility-supplied camps operated by the Resettlement Administration, a New Deal agency that has been established to help the migrants, but there is not enough money and space to care for all of the needy. As a Federal facility, the camp is also off-limits to California deputies who constantly harass and provoke the newcomers.

In response to the exploitation of laborers, there are people who attempt for the workers to join unions, including Casy, who had gone to jail to cover for Tom's attack of a deputy. The surviving Joads unknowingly work as strikebreakers on a peach orchard where Casy is involved in a strike that eventually turns violent. Tom Joad witnesses the killing of Casy and kills the attacker, becoming 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. When the rains arrive, the Joads' dwelling is flooded, and they move to higher ground, where Rose of Sharon breast feeds a man too sick from starvation to eat solid food.

Characters

• Tom Joad — Protagonist of the story; the Joad family's second son, named after his father. Later on, Tom takes leadership of the family even though he is young.
• Ma Joad — matriarch. Practical and warm-spirited, she 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. Hardworking sharecropper and family man.
• Uncle John Joad — Older brother of Pa Joad, feels responsible for the death of his young wife years before when he ignored her pleas for a doctor because he thought she just had a stomachache. Filled with guilt, he is prone to binges involving booze and prostitutes.
• Jim Casy — A former preacher who lost his faith after committing fornication with willing members of his church numerous times, and from his perception that religion has no solace or answer for the difficulties the people are experiencing. Christ figure, shares his initials with Jesus.
• 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 Rivers — Childish and dreamy teenage daughter who develops as the novel progresses 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 her dying father). Pregnant in the beginning of the novel, she delivers a stillborn baby, probably as a result of malnutrition. Her name is pronounced "Rosasharn" by the family.
• Connie Rivers — Rose of Sharon's husband. Young and naive, he is overwhelmed by the responsibilities of marriage and impending fatherhood, and abandons her shortly after arriving in California. He is stated to be 19 years old upon his and Tom's first encounter before leaving for California.
• Noah Joad — The oldest son who is the first to willingly leave the family, choosing to stay by an idyllic river and survive by fishing. Injured at birth, described as "strange", he may have slight learning difficulties or autistic spectrum disorder.
• Grampa Joad — Tom's grandfather who expresses his strong desire to stay in Oklahoma. His full name is given as "William James Joad". Grampa is drugged by his family with "soothin' syrup" to force him to leave but dies shortly after of a stroke.
• Granma Joad — The religious wife of Grandpa Joad, she seems to lose the will to live (and consequently dies while crossing the desert) after her husband's death.
• Ruthie Joad — The youngest daughter, aged twelve.
• Winfield Joad — The youngest male in the family, aged ten. He and Ruthie are close.
• Ivy and Sairy Wilson — Kansas folks in a similar predicament, who help attend the death of Grandpa and subsequently share the traveling with the Joads as far as the California state line. It is implied Sairy is too ill to carry on.
• Mr. Wainwright — The father of Aggie Wainwright and husband of Mrs. Wainwright. Worries over his daughter who is sixteen and in his words "growed up".
• Mrs. Wainwright — Mother to Aggie Wainwright and wife to Mr. Wainwright. She helps deliver Rose-of-Sharon's stillborn baby with Ma.
• Aggie Wainwright — Sixteen years of age. Daughter to Mr. and Mrs. Wainwright. Intends on marrying Al. She has limited interactions with the other characters. Aggie takes care of Ruthie and Winfield when Rose of Sharon goes into labor.

Development

Title

While writing the novel at his home, 16250 Greenwood Lane, in what is now Monte Sereno, California, Steinbeck had unusual difficulty devising a title. "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 lyrics 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;
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.

The phrase also appears at the end of chapter 25 which describes the purposeful destruction of food to keep the price high:

...and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

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, which is hinted at but does not materialize within the novel.

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^[3] 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]

Time Magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.^[5]

References

Notes

Bibliography

External links

• 2 short radio episodes http://californialegacy.org/radio_anthology/scripts/steinbeck.html Spring in California] and Route 66 from The Grapes of Wrath, California Legacy Project.

From Wikiquote

The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is a classic American novel by John Steinbeck. It tells the saga of Tom Joad, his family and his friends, as they try to survive the Great Depression.

Page numbers based on Penguin edition, 1992, ISBN 0141185066

• I gotta see them folks that’s gone out on the road. I got a feelin' I got to see them. They gonna need help no preachin' can give 'em. Hope of heaven when their lives ain’t lived? Holy Sperit when their own sperit is downcast an’ sad?
  • Preacher Casy, p.55

• Grampa walked up and slapped Tom on the chest, and his eyes grinned with affection and pride. "How are ya, Tommy?"
  "O.K.," said Tom. "How ya keepin' yaself?"
  "Full a piss an' vinegar," said Grampa.
  • p.83

• To California or any place—every one a drum major leading a parade of hurts, marching with our bitterness. And some day—the armies of bitterness will all be going the same way. And they'll all walk together, and there'll be a dead terror from it.
  • Chapter 9, pp.91-92

• For man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments. This you may say of man—when theories change and crash, when schools, philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of thought, national, religious, economic, grow and disintegrate, man reaches, stumbles forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes. Having stepped forward, he may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back. This you may say and know it and know it. This you may know when the bombs plummet out of the black planes on the market place, when prisoners are stuck like pigs, when the crushed bodies drain filthily in the dust. You may know it in this way. If the step were not being taken, if the stumbling-forward ache were not alive, the bombs would not fall, the throats would not be cut. Fear the time when the bombs stop falling while the bombers live—for every bomb is proof that the spirit has not died. And fear the time when the strikes stop while the great owners live—for every little beaten strike is proof that the step is being taken. And this you can know—fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is the foundation of Manself, and this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe.
  • Chapter 14, pp.156-157

• This is the thing to bomb. This is the beginning—from "I" to "we". If you who own the things people must have could understand this, you might preserve yourself. If you could separate causes from results, if you could know that Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin were results, not causes, you might survive. But that you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezes you forever into "I", and cuts you off forever from the "we".
  • Chapter 14, p.158

• Tom grinned. "It don’t take no nerve to do somepin when there ain’t nothin’ else you can do."
  • p.231

• "Well," said Casy, "for anybody else it was a mistake, but if you think it was a sin—then it's a sin. A fella builds his own sins right up from the groun'."
  • p.235

• And Ruthie whispered, "Tha's Granma, an' she's dead." Winfield nodded solemnly. "She ain't breathin' at all. She's awful dead."
  • p.239

• 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 dispossessed increased, and every effort of the great owners was directed at repression.
  • p.249

• Men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby their fruits may be eaten. And the failure hangs over the State like a great sorrow. ...and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
  • Chapter 25, pp.349

• If you're in trouble or hurt or need—go to poor people. They're the only ones that'll help—the only ones.
  • Ma Joad, p.394

• Then I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be ever'where—wherever you look. 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 and they know supper's ready. An' when our folk eat the stuff they raise an' live in the houses they build—why, I'll be there.
  • Tom Joad, p.439

• Prayer never brought in no side-meat. Takes a shoat to bring in pork.
  • Tom Joad

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The Grapes of Wrath