The Grapes of Wrath

The Grapes of Wrath

First edition cover to "The Grapes of Wrath"
Author	John Steinbeck
Language	English
Genre	Novel
Publisher	The Viking Press
Publication date	1939
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
ISBN	ISBN

This article is about the novel. For other uses, see Grapes of Wrath (disambiguation).

The Grapes of Wrath is a work of fiction written by John Steinbeck and published in 1939. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and 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.

Plot introduction

Set in the Great Depression, the popular proletarian novel, in which descriptive, narrative, and philosophical passages succeed one another, tells the story of a family of sharecroppers, the Joads - 'Okie' farmers driven from their land by drought and the Dust Bowl, and forced to endure the hardships of migrant workers moving West.

Explanation of the novel's title

Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men in his home , 16250 Greenwood Lane, in what is now Monte Sereno, California. When he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature (1962), the Swedish Academy called the book "an epic chronicle".

Note the similarity to the name Job (pronounced like "Jobe"), a man from the Old Testament that suffered greatly when tested, but remained faithful. The novel details the nearly hopeless situation of the downtrodden American farmer in the years of the Great Depression, and emphasizes cooperative solutions to the social problems brought about by industrialization.

Steinbeck experienced a rough time coming up with a title for the epic. "The Grapes of Wrath", suggested by his wife, Carol, deemed more suitable than any of the names John himself 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."

This phrase was derived from a passage in the Book of Revelation: "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" (14:19).

Plot summary

Template:Spoilers The narrative begins from Tom Joad's point of view just after he is released (on parole) from prison after serving four years for manslaughter. On his journey home he finds a preacher, Jim Casy, whom he remembers from his childhood. The two move on together and when they arrive at Tom's childhood home and farm they find it deserted. Surprised and disconcertered Tom decides his family must be at his Uncle's house a few miles away and moves onward, still with Casey. Upon arrival at Uncle John's residence, he finds his family preparing a truck and everything they own for a move; he learns that his family's crops were destroyed in the Dust Bowl and, since they already had outstanding loans, they were forced to default. With their farm repossesed the Joads sought solace in hope; hope enscribed on handbills that were distributed everywhere in Oklahoma describing the beautiful country and high wages to be found out west. The Joads, along with Jim Casy, were seduced by this facade, and invested everything they had so that the journey could be made (although leaving Oklahoma would be breaking parole, Tom decided that it was a risk, albeit minimal, that he had to take).

En route, they discover that the roads and highways are saturated with thousands of other families making the same trek, entrapped 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 this sojourn may not be what they have built it up to be. This realism, bolstered 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 as they have nothing else.

Upon arrival, they find there are hordes of applicants for every job, and thus, little hope of finding a stable income from which to live. This is due to the plethora of labour, the rights they lack, and the collusion of the agrarian industry. The tragedy lies in the simplicity and impossibility of their dream: a house, a family, and a steady job--whatever that may be.

File:TheGrapesOfWrathBookCover.jpg

Recent cover for The Grapes of Wrath

In response to the exploitation of labourers, the workers begin to join trade unions, and the surviving members of the family unknowingly work on an orchard currently involved in a strike that eventually turns violent, killing the preacher Jim Casy and forcing Tom Joad, the protagonist, to kill again and resume his fugitive status. He bids fairwell to his mother, promising that no matter where he runs, he will be a tireless advocate for the proletariat. Rose-of-Sharon miscarries at the conclusion of the novel; however, Ma (Mrs. Joad) remains steadfast and forces the family through the bereavment. In the final act of the book, Rose-of-Sharon commits the most selfless and beautiful act to be found throughout: she breast feeds a starving and dying man, laying all her societal inhibitions aside to save a life. This final act illustrates the depravity the 'Okies' were forced to submit to, but also, the endurance of humanity.

Main Characters

• Tom Joad – protagonist of the story
• Ma Joad – helps the family keep together
• Jim Casy – a former preacher who leads a revolution
• Rose-of-Sharon Joad – impractical, selfish daughter who grows to become a mature woman

Awards and nominations

The novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

• 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. 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. This film has subsequently been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

Bannings

The Grapes of Wrath was banned immediatly upon its publication in Kern County, California, where a great part of the novel is set. The official reason was the coarse language it contained, and the "nudity" (breast feeding) scene at the end of the book. However, the driving force behind the banning was the Associated Farmers of Kern County. This was in 1939. The book is frequently banned in schools across the United States, and in 1986, in Graves County, Kentucky, an adult was arrested for possession of a copy.

In popular song

• Woody Guthrie wrote The Ballad of Tom Joad the night he saw the film. He described the film in a column:

"Shows the damn bankers' men that broke us and the dust that choked us, and comes right out in plain old English and says what to do about it.

"It says you got to get together and have some meetins, and stick together, and raise old billy hell till you get your job, and get your farm back, and your house and your chickens and your groceries and your clothes, and your money back" (reprinted in Woody Sez [New York, 1975], p. 133).

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

See also

• The Grapes of Wrath movie.
• T.C. Boyle's The Tortilla Curtain (1995) for a novel with a similar subject matter.
• Roman Charity, the story of Pero breastfeeding the ailing Cimon

External links

• Steinbeck's myth of the Okies. For a more sympathetic assessment of the accuracy of Steinbeck's novel, see Carey McWilliams' "California Pastoral," which is included in the Viking Critical Edition of The Grapes of Wrath.
• Death in the Dust: John Steinbeck's first-person account of the conditions he observed at a California squatter's camp.
• Slashdoc : The Grapes of Wrath Analytical essays of the novel
• The Grapes of Wrath at IMDb