KRG – The Kochi Reading Group: September 2018

First Edition cover, 1939

The Grapes of Wrath is the story of a family, the Joads, caught in a storm of dust, a country reeling from the Great Depression of the economy, and the violence of the 1930s. It is about a family being forced off the land and onto the road in one of the largest migrations in American history. It is a story that touched such a nerve in America that many forgot that the Joads were only make-believe, a fictional family from the mind of a 36-year old novelist, John Steinbeck. From their harrowing journey West to the novel’s disquieting ending The Grapes of Wrath remains one of the most loved (and hated) novels of the 20th century. [narration taken from a video]

The Dust itself was the combined result of prolonged drought and faulty farm practices, exacerbated by the storms and tornadoes that are common in the mid-West that carry away the topsoil. The Great Depression of 1929 caused such a huge hit to the economy of America (a quarter of the working population was thrown out of work) that it took almost 12 years and the onset of WWII production (financed by Government borrowing) and the enormous war-time production of goods and services, before the economy could be restored to full employment and a normal level of consumption. During that time people who were rendered jobless tried to find work, but they received only subsistence wages at best. Often they had to depend on soup kitchens for relief from hunger. The large-scale poverty has been recorded unsparingly by wonderful photographers like Dorothea Lange.

Small time farmers who until then were able to make a living off the land with agriculture and farm animals suddenly found themselves ruined by crop failure and insufficient feed or water for their animals. They had nowhere to go for relief and found themselves enticed by handbills promising work as fruit and cotton-pickers in California, nearly 2,000 miles ways. Gathering a few belongings and selling off their redundant farm equipment, they embarked on the long journey West on Route 66, the mother road, in cars that were often in poor condition, jalopies really. One such is the Hudson model 1926 in which the Joads traveled:

The 1926 Hudson used in the film produced by Darryl F. Zanuck in 1940

For those who know cars this was the wrong model to employ in the novel, for the Hudson was not a car for the masses, but rather an upper-class people’s car.

What makes the novel poignant is that the promised hope of living-wage jobs and permanent homes in California never materialised for the Joads. Steinbeck attributes this directly to the greed of the orchard owners and the landed class that owned large cotton fields and fruit farms. They preyed on the masses of cheap labour available, competing for the limited seasonal jobs, and succeeded in beating down wages to bare subsistence levels. Steinbeck’s exposure of the union-bashing labour practices of the large agribusinesses was the reason he encountered hate after releasing the novel in 1939. He had what for an author is the distinct honour of having his novel banned and burned in his native town in California, Salinas.

The National Steinbeck Center, Salinas, CA

Today the Steinbeck Museum is the chief attraction of Salinas and an engine of tourism. The Grapes of Wrath was the kind of novel an activist might write, although Steinbeck was avowedly not a public person. His novel did have the effect, particularly when it was followed by John Ford’s film (produced by Darryl F. Zanuck), of being noticed by leading people like Eleanor Roosevelt who came to California and saw at first hand what Steinbeck described. Through her work the politics of the country changed and Congress took action to ameliorate conditions in the camps and legislate minimum wages.