The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck Centennial Edition (1902-2002)
by John Steinbeck
List Price: $15.00
Pages: 464
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0142000663
Publisher: Penguin
When John Steinbeck accepted his Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962,
he described the writer's obligation as "dredging up to the light our dark and
dangerous dreams for the purpose of improvement." For some critics, that purpose has
obscured Steinbeck's literary value. He has been characterized variously as an advocate of
socialist-style solutions to the depredations of capitalism, a champion of individualism,
a dabbler in sociobiology, and a naturalist.
While evidence for different political and philosophical stances may be culled from
Steinbeck's writings, a reader who stops at this point misses some of the most interesting
aspects of his work, including his use of paradox. "Men is supposed to think things
out," insists Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath. "It ought to have some
meaning" (p. 55). But in this epic novel, as well as in Of Mice and Men and The
Pearl, Steinbeck seems to question whether the mysteries of human existence can ever
be fully explained. In these works that span the grim decade from 1937 to 1947, Steinbeck
urges the dispossessed to challenge a system that denies them both sustenance and dignity,
and to seek the spiritual belonging that enables individuals to achieve their full
humanity. So we have the paradox of the author apparently denouncing injustice while also
exalting acceptance of the sorrows visited on humanity, whether those sorrows are wrought
by nature or by humans themselves.
All three books examine the morality and necessity of actions the characters choose as
they pursue their dreams. The poor fisherman Kino in The Pearl dreams of education
for his son and salvation for his people. We first meet him in the dimness before dawn,
listening to the sounds of his wife, Juana, at her chores, which merge in his mind with
the ancestral Song of the Family. "In this gulf of uncertain light [where] there were
more illusions than realities" (p. 19), the pearl that Kino finds lights the way to a
more just world and the end of centuries of mistreatment by white colonizers. But the
promise of wealth manifests the archetypal evil hidden in the community's unconscious,
like the pearl that had lain hidden in its oyster at the bottom of the sea. As the dream
turns dark, Kino descends into violence, bringing death to four men and ultimately to his
own son. What other choices might he have made? This parable raises questions about our
relationship to nature, the human need for spiritual connection, and the cost of resisting
injustice.
Steinbeck's most controversial work, The Grapes of Wrath, raises similar
questions. During the Dust Bowl Era, three generations of the Joad family set out on the
road, seeking a decent life in fertile California and joining thousands of others bound by
an experience that transforms them from "I" to "we" (p. 152).
Cooperation springs up among them spontaneously, in sharp contrast with the ruthlessness
of big business and the sad choices made by its victims, for whom "a fella got to
eat" (p. 344) is a continual refrain. Casy, the preacher turned strike leader,
wonders about the "one big soul ever'body's a part of" (p. 24).
On their journey to the promised land, the characters in The Grapes of Wrath
confront enigmatic natural forces and dehumanizing social institutions. Casy is martyred
as he takes a stand for farmers who have lost their land to drought and are brutally
exploited as migrant laborers. His disciple Tom Joad, who served time for killing a man in
a bar fight, ultimately kills another man he believes responsible for Casy's death. Tom's
passionate conviction—expressed in his assertion that "wherever they's a
fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there" (p. 419)—stirs our
sympathy; but his dilemma, like Kino's, requires us to ask whether taking a human life can
ever be justified.
The Grapes of Wrath and The Pearl are also linked by their female
characters and the questions they raise about gender roles and family identity. In The
Pearl, Juana's "quality of woman, the reason, the caution, the sense of
preservation, could cut through Kino's manness and save them all" (p. 59). Is this
quality most responsible for the return of the pearl to the sea at the end of the novel?
Like Juana, Ma Joad is "the citadel of the family" (p. 74). As the remnants of
the Joad family seek refuge in a barn at the close of The Grapes of Wrath, Ma's
daughter Rose of Sharon nurses a starving stranger with milk meant for her dead baby. This
final scene of female nurturing offers a resolution while also disturbing our long-held
ideas about family.
Steinbeck departs from this depiction of women in Of Mice and Men. Confined to
her husband's home, and never given a name in the novel, Curley's wife functions almost as
a force of nature, precipitating the events that wreck the men's "best laid
schemes," as poet Robert Burns wrote. Whereas the women in The Grapes of Wrath
and The Pearl suggest hope even in the bleakest of circumstances, Curley's wife
leaves only shattered dreams in her wake.
Of Mice and Men tells a tightly compressed story set during the Great
Depression. George and Lennie, drifters and friends in a landscape of loners, scrape by
with odd jobs while dreaming of the time they'll "live on the fatta the lan'"
(p. 101). Lennie has a massive body and limited intelligence, and his unpredictable
behavior casts George as his protector. The novel is peopled with outcasts—a
black man, a cripple, a lonely woman. The terror of the consequences of infirmity and old
age in an unresponsive world is underscored when a laborer's old dog is shot. Is Lennie's
similar death at the hands of his protector, with his dream before his eyes, preferable to
what the future holds for him? Nearly all the characters share in some version of the
dream, recited almost ritualistically, and in their narrow world it is pitifully small:
"All kin's a vegetables in the garden, and if we want a little whisky we can sell a
few eggs or something, or some milk. We'd jus' live there. We'd belong there" (p.
54).
The ending appears to be at odds with Steinbeck's explicit exhortations for social
change in the other two novels. In Of Mice and Men, he seems to appeal to a higher
form of wisdom in the character of Slim, who does not aspire to anything beyond the sphere
he occupies. His "understanding beyond thought" (p. 31) echoes Rose of Sharon's
mysterious smile at the end of The Grapes of Wrath.
From the questions his characters pose about what it means to be fully human, Steinbeck
may be understood to charge literature with serving not only as a call to action, but as
an expression and acceptance of paradox in our world. "There is something
untranslatable about a book," he wrote. "It is itself—one of the
very few authentic magics our species has created."
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1. Are we meant to conclude that Tom's
killing of the deputy is justified?
2. What makes Casy believe that "maybe all men got one big soul
ever'body's a part of" (p. 24)?
3. Why does Steinbeck devote a chapter to the land turtle's progress on
the highway?
4. Why does Pa yield his traditional position in the family to Ma?
5. What does Ma mean when she says,
"Bearin' an' dyin' is two pieces of the same thing" (p. 210)?
6. As Tom leaves the family, he says,
"I'll be ever'where—wherever you look" (p. 419). In what sense does
he mean "everywhere"?
7. Why does Steinbeck interrupt the Joads'
narrative with short chapters of commentary and description?
8. Why does Rose of Sharon smile as she
feeds the starving man with milk intended for her baby?
9. What does Steinbeck mean when he writes,
"In the souls of the people The Grapes of Wrath are filling and growing heavy,
growing heavy for the vintage" (p. 349)?
10. Why do different characters insist at
different points in the book, "A fella got to eat" (p. 344, for example)?
11. Why does the book start with drought and end with floods?
12. Is the family intact at the end of the novel?
13. Why does Uncle John set the dead baby
adrift rather than bury it?
14. What is the source of Ma's conviction
that "we're the people—we go on" (p. 280)?
15. Does nature function as a force for
either good or evil in this book?
For Further Reflection
1. As his land is destroyed, an anonymous
tenant says, "We've got a bad thing made by men, and by God that's something we can
change" (p. 38). Is Steinbeck suggesting that a just social order is possible?
2. When the narrator says "men ate what they had not raised, had no
connection with the bread" (p. 36), the implication is that this break diminishes
humanity. Can spirituality be maintained with increasing automation?
3. Casy
tells Tom about a prisoner whose view of history is that "ever' time they's a little
step fo'ward, she may slip back a little, but she never slips clear back... they wasn't no
waste" (p. 384). Do you agree with this view?
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