Everything about The Grapes Of Wrath totally explained
The Grapes of Wrath is a classic novel published in 1939 and written by
John Steinbeck, who was awarded the
Pulitzer Prize and the
Nobel Prize for Literature. It is frequently read in high school and college literature classes. A celebrated
Hollywood film version, starring
Henry Fonda and directed by
John Ford, was made in
1940; however, the endings of the book and the movie differ greatly.
Steinbeck wrote
The Grapes of Wrath at his home, 16250 Greenwood Lane, in what is now
Monte Sereno, California. Set during the
Great Depression, the
novel focuses on a poor family of
sharecroppers, the Joads, driven from their home by
drought, economic hardship, and changes in the agriculture industry. In a nearly hopeless situation, they set out for California's Central Valley along with thousands of other "
Okies" in search of land, jobs, and dignity. The novel is meant to emphasize the need for cooperative, as opposed to individualistic, solutions to social problems brought about by the mechanization of agriculture and the
Dust Bowl drought.
Plot summary
The narrative begins from
Tom Joad's point of view just after he's
paroled from prison after serving four years for
manslaughter. On his journey home, he meets a 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 which is just a few miles away, where he finds his family loading a
Hudson truck with just about everything they ever owned; he learns that his family's crops were destroyed in the
Dust Bowl and that they were ultimately forced to default on their loans. With their farm repossessed, the Joads seek solace in hope; hope inscribed on the handbills that are distributed everywhere in
Oklahoma, describing the beautiful and fruitful country of
California and high pay to be had out west. The Joads, along with Jim Casy, are seduced by this façade and pretense and invest everything they've into the journey. Although leaving Oklahoma would be breaking parole, Tom decides that it's a risk, albeit minimal, that he's to take.
While en route, they dejectedly discover that all of the roads and the highways are saturated with crowds of other families who are also making the same trek, ensnared by the same promise. As the Joads continue on their journey and hear many stories from others, some coming from California, they're ultimately forced to confront the eerie possibility that their prospects may not be what they hoped. This realization, supported 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 because they've no other choice.
Upon arrival, they find hordes of applicants for every job and little hope of finding a decent wage, because of the oversupply of labor,
lack of rights, and the collusion of the big corporate farmers. The tragedy lies in the simplicity and impossibility of their dream: a house, a family, and a steady job. A gleam of hope is presented by
Weedpatch, the clean, warm camps operated by the
Resettlement Administration, a
New Deal agency that tried to help the migrants. However, the benevolent bureaucrat Jim Rawley who manages the camp doesn't have enough money and space to care for all of the needy.
In response to the exploitation of laborers, the workers begin to join
unions. The surviving members of the family unknowingly work as
strikebreakers on an orchard involved in a
strike that eventually turns violent, killing the preacher Casy and forcing Tom Joad to kill again and become a fugitive. He bids farewell to his mother, promising that no matter where he runs, he'll 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. In the end, Rose of Sharon commits the only act in the book that isn't futile: she
breast feeds a starving man, still trying to show hope in humanity after her own negative experience. This final act is said to illustrate the spontaneous mutual sharing that will lead to a new awareness of collective values.
Characters
- Tom Joad — protagonist of the story; the Joad family's second son, named for his father.
- Ma Joad — matriarch who tries to hold the family together. Her given name is never learned; it's suggested that her maiden name was Hazlett.
- Pa Joad - patriarch, also named Tom.
- Uncle John - older brother of Pa Joad, feels responsible for the death of his young wife years before when he ignored her pleas for doctor. He tries to repress "sins" such as drinking, then fulfills them with gross excesses like binge drinking.
- Jim Casy — a preacher who loses his faith after committing fornication numerous times. He represents in the book all that's holy.
- Al Joad — the second youngest son who cares mainly for cars and girls; looks up to Tom, but begins to find his own way. Over the book's course he gradually matures and learns responsibility.
- Rose of Sharon Rivers ("Rosasharn") — impractical, immature daughter who develops as the novel progresses and grows 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 a dying father). Pregnant in the beginning of the novel, delivers a stillborn baby, probably as a result of malnutrition.
- Connie Rivers - Rose of Sharon's husband. Very young, and overwhelmed by the responsibilities of marriage and impending fatherhood, he eventually abandons her.
- Noah Joad — the oldest son who is the first to willingly leave the family. Injured at birth, described as "strange", he may be slightly mentally handicapped or autistic.
- Grandpa Joad - Tom's grandfather who is the first slut to walk on the earth to express desire to stay in Oklahoma. He is drugged, and subsequently dies as a result of this. Symbolically, it's due to his spirit staying at the farm.
- Granma Joad - The religious wife of Grandpa Joad, seems to lose will to live (and consequently dies) after her husband's death.
- Ruthie Joad - One of the younger children. She and Winfield get along well.
- Winfield Joad - The youngest male in the family.
Title
Steinbeck had unusual difficulty devising a title for his novel. "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
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.
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.
Major Symbols
The
turtle in Chapter 3 is a metaphor for the working class farmers whose struggles are recounted in the novel. Significantly, the dangers posed to the turtle are those of modernity and
business. The intrusion of cars and the building of highways endangers the turtle, and the truck that strikes the turtle is a symbol of big business and
commerce. The struggling of the turtle also evokes the workings of narratives in general, since the trajectory of the turtle mimicks the trajectory of the novel: moments of action and pauses, slow process,
peripetias. This land turtle becomes a
proleptic device for the following chapters.
The turtle also is a biological organism in conflict with an increasingly mechanized environment, and Steinbeck's Joad family represent an answer to problems from the biological perspective. Rose of Sharon's
pregnancy holds the promise of a new beginning which is broken when she delivers a stillborn baby. However, the family moves boldly and gracefully forward, rather than slipping into despair, and the novel ends in hope, albeit again with a fundamentally biological note, as a starving man is breast-fed to keep him alive.
There are numerous Judeo-Christian symbols throughout the novel. The Joad Family, like the
Israelites, are homeless and persecuted people looking for the promised land. Jim Casy can be viewed as a symbol of
Jesus Christ, who began his mission after a period of solitude in the wilderness. When the group first leaves for their journey West, there are thirteen of them, representing Jesus Christ and the twelve apostles. Like Jesus, Jim offers himself as the sacrifice to save his people. Jim's last words to the man who murdered him was: "Listen, you fellas don' know what you're doing," similar to Jesus's "Father forgive them; they know not what they do." Tom becomes Jim's disciple after his death.
A great flood at the end of the novel is related in the Bible as the story of
Noah and the Great Flood. A flood symbolizes uncontained
water, which has gone beyond the basic boundary between the
earth and water. Floods also symbolize the end of one cycle of time and the beginning of a new cycle of time. Therefore, a flood symbolizes both death and regenerative birth at the same time. The image in which Uncle John disposes of the stillborn baby recalls Moses being sent down the
Nile River, suggesting that the family, like the Hebrews in
Egypt, will be delivered from the
slavery of its present circumstances.
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." 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'." However, although Steinbeck was accused of exaggeration of the camp conditions to make a political point, in fact he'd done the opposite, underplaying the conditions that he well knew were worse than the novel describes
(External Link
) 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 don't 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.
In popular culture
Adaptations for film, television, theatre, and opera
A film version was produced by Darryl F. Zanuck in 1940 and directed by John Ford. Ford won the Academy Award for Directing and Jane Darwell won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. The film was also nominated for several other awards: Academy Award 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. It has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
The Steppenwolf Theater Company produced a stage version of the book, adapted by Frank Galati. Gary Sinise played Tom Joad for its entire run of or 188 performances on Broadway in 1990, and was shown on PBS the following year.
An opera based on the novel was co-produced by the Minnesota Opera and Utah Symphony and Opera, with music by Ricky Ian Gordon and libretto by Michael Korie. The world premiere performance of the opera was given in February 2007, to favorable local reviews.
The South Park episode Over Logging is an homage of The Grapes of Wrath, featuring the characters heading to Silicon Valley California due to an internet shortage in Colorado.
Music
In 1940 Woody Guthrie recorded a ballad called Tom Joad. This ballad, set to the tune of John Hardy, summarizes the plot of the book/movie. It was so long that it had to be recorded in two parts. Woody wrote the song after seeing the movie, which he described as the 'best cussed pitcher I ever seen'.
In 1995, Bruce Springsteen released an album entitled The Ghost of Tom Joad featuring a song of the same name. This song was covered by Rage Against the Machine and most recently by José González's band Junip.
The English Progressive Rock band Camel recorded an album Dust and Dreams (1991) inspired by The Grapes of Wrath.
On Pink Floyd's album A Momentary Lapse of Reason, the opening lines for the song Sorrow are paraphrased from the beginning of a chapter in The Grapes of Wrath: "Sweet smell of a great sorrow lies over the land."Further Information
Get more info on 'The Grapes Of Wrath'.
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