The Grapes of Wrath

The Grapes of Wrath covers the story of a farming family in southern USA who's farm is destroyed by the dust bowl environmental crisis and is forced to up and leave by banks looking to recoup on their loans. They move to California to begin work as fruit pickers and more or less immediately are drawn into the wider political conflict of labour rights that plagues the USA even to this day.

The main thing that I take away from the story is how hard fought labour laws have actually been. I've said before in my review of 'The Names' that dramatisations capture so much more of the interpersonal than mere recounts can because they allow the author to shine the light exactly as they want to on the issues or ideas they want to explore. The narrative explores constantly the nuance of the fact that the native townsfolk, in constant battle with the hungry homeless 'Okies' (Oklahomans), are not in the wrong to despise and dehumanise them.

As the men and women migrate in their millions to California seeking work, they come up against the reality of the laws of capital. That workers are too easy to exploit if they are unorganised, that the capital of the bourgeoisie enables them to oppress and extract near slave levels of destitution induced labour.

"Look," said the man. "It don't make no sense. This fella wants eight hunderd men. So he prints up five thousand of them things an' maybe twenty thousan' people sees 'em. An' maybe two-three thousan' folks gets movin' account a this here han'bill. Folks that's crazy with worry."

"But it don't make no sense!" Pa cried.

"Not till you see the fella that put out this here bill. You'll see him, or somebody that's workin' for him. You'll be a-campin' by a ditch, you an' fifty other famblies. An' he'll look in your tent an' see if you got anything lef' to eat. An' if you got nothin', he says, 'Wanna job?' An' you'll say, 'I sure do, mister. I'll sure thank you for a chance to do some work.' And he'll say, 'I can use you.' An' you'll say, 'When do I start?' An' he'll tell you where to go, an' what time, an' then he'll go on. Maybe he needs two hunderd men, so he talks to five hunderd, an' they tell other folks, an' when you get to the place, they's a thousan' men. This here fella says, 'I'm paying twenty cents an hour.' An' maybe half a the men walk off. But they's still five hunderd that's so goddamn hungry they'll work for nothin' but biscuits."

I have read two other books by Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men and In Dubious Battle. They both follow working class men in California during the great depression of the 1930's. This book in a way lays the groundwork for In Dubious Battle, which is about strike organisers and the men striking. But this book, in a sense, is about the men and women who found themselves outside of a strike, still at the mercy of the lax labour laws at the time. Whilst I suppose Of Mice and Men are about the men working themselves without the more complex themes like this.

The bits that stuck out to me most where the way that the police were extremely complicit in abusing their power to attack the Okies and aid the wealthy land owners. For instance, there was a government camp that they attempted to start a riot at so that they could shut it down that was only thwarted by a tip off. At odds with the Okies even when they were well organised and self-governing.

The book also strongly contrasts an idea of socialism through the government camp and the rampant exploitative capitalism of the actual farms that they must work for. It is nuanced in its exploration, showing that there were just too many migrants at once for the amount of work that was available, and that those migrants, without government intervention, were driven to crime and begging through starvation.

I think that ultimately the book doesn't actually directly offer any answers. It seems to imply that syndicalist socialism is a valid structure of government. It seems to imply that a strong labour union is an ideal worth fighting for, but that ultimately all things fall apart under the simple animal needs of too many humans who need to eat. The most recurring articulation compares the way that we treat horses and the way that we treat humans:

"If a fella owns a team a horses, he don't raise no hell if he got to feed 'em when they ain't workin'. But a fella got men workin' for him, he jus' don't give a damn. Horses is a hell of a lot more worth than men. I don' understan' it."

Thus, in a sense, under a modern intuition, I believe that Steinbeck would be very pro UBI, as socialist governmental structures require forced redistribution.

The ending of the book is very interesting. Throughout, the book has had a strong theme of selflessness. The poor work together generously, constantly banding together and aiding each other through their hardships. The driving force of this of course is need. The poor need to work together and that need also causes strong social bonds. Another strong theme was household power structures changing from patriarchal to matriarchal once the need for family unity was foremost, as opposed to when things are stable. The matriarch, Ma, is responsible for holding the family together emotionally until they can settle. Pa loses power in the household when he is unable to work.

This fully culminates in the ending where Rosasharn bares her breast to a starving man in a barn and feeds him the milk meant for her stillborn baby. Combining the themes of earth-mother as the emotional head of the family and poverty necessitating individual sacrifice for the greater whole.

P.s. the ending also did something very rare in literature, it ended in medias res. The characters are at their most destitute and set-upon. Yet it does not attempt to tell you what will happen to them. You simply hope that it will get better, but you are nearly sure it will not.

Quote of the book is from chapter 25:

The spring is beautiful in California. Valleys in which the fruit blossoms are fragrant pink and white waters in a shallow sea. Then the first tendrils of the grapes swelling from the old gnarled vines, cascade down to cover the trunks. The full green hills are round and soft as breasts. And on the level vegetable lands are the mile-long rows of pale green lettuce and the spindly little cauliflowers, the gray-green unearthly artichoke plants.

And then the leaves break out on the trees, and the petals drop from the fruit trees and carpet the earth with pink and white. The centers of the blossoms swell and grow and color: cherries and apples, peaches and pears, figs which close the flower in the fruit. All California quickens with produce, and the fruit grows heavy, and the limbs bend gradually under the fruit so that little crutches must be placed under them to support the weight.

Behind the fruitfulness are men of understanding and knowledge, and skill, men who experiment with seed, endlessly developing the techniques for greater crops of plants whose roots will resist the million enemies of the earth: the molds, the insects, the rusts, the blights. These men work carefully and endlessly to perfect the seed, the roots. And there are the men of chemistry who spray the trees against pests, who sulphur the grapes, who cut out disease and rots, mildews and sicknesses. Doctors of preventive medicine, men at the borders who look for fruit flies, for Japanese beetle, men who quarantine the sick trees and root them out and burn them, men of knowledge. The men who graft the young trees, the little vines, are the cleverest of all, for theirs is a surgeon's job, as tender and delicate; and these men must have surgeons' hands and surgeons' hearts to slit the bark, to place the grafts, to bind the wounds and cover them from the air. These are great men.

Along the rows, the cultivators move, tearing the spring grass and turning it under to make a fertile earth, breaking the ground to hold the water up near the surface, ridging the ground in little pools for the irrigation, destroying the weed roots that may drink the water away from the trees.

And all the time the fruit swells and the flowers break out in long clusters on the vines. And in the growing year the warmth grows and the leaves turn dark green. The prunes lengthen like little green bird's eggs, and the limbs sag down against the crutches under the weight. And the hard little pears take shape, and the beginning of the fuzz comes out on the peaches. Grape blossoms shed their tiny petals and the hard little beads become green buttons, and the buttons grow heavy. The men who work in the fields, the owners of the little orchards, watch and calculate. The year is heavy with produce. And the men are proud, for of their knowledge they can make the year heavy. They have transformed the world with their knowledge. The short, lean wheat has been made big and productive. Little sour apples have grown large and sweet, and that old grape that grew among the trees and fed the birds its tiny fruit has mothered a thousand varieties, red and black, green and pale pink, purple and yellow; and each variety with its own flavor. The men who work in the experimental farms have made new fruits: nectarines and forty kinds of plums, walnuts with paper shells. And always they work, selecting, grafting, changing, driving themselves, driving the earth to produce.

And first the cherries ripen. Cent and a half a pound. Hell, we can't pick 'em for that. Black cherries and red cherries, full and sweet, and the birds eat half of each cherry and the yellowjackets buzz into the holes the birds made. And on the ground the seeds drop and dry with black shreds hanging from them.

The purple prunes soften and sweeten. My God, we can't pick them and dry and sulphur them. We can't pay wages, no matter what wages. And the purple prunes carpet the ground. And first the skins wrinkle a little and swarms of flies come to feast, and the valley is filled with the odor of sweet decay. The meat turns dark and the crop shrivels on the ground.

And the pears grow yellow and soft. Five dollars a ton. Five dollars for forty fifty- pound boxes; trees pruned and sprayed, orchards cultivated—pick the fruit, put it in boxes, load the trucks, deliver the fruit to the cannery—forty boxes for five dollars. We can't do it. And the yellow fruit falls heavily to the ground and splashes on the ground. The yellowjackets dig into the soft meat, and there is a smell of ferment and rot.

Then the grapes—we can't make good wine. People can't buy good wine. Rip the grapes from the vines, good grapes, rotten grapes, wasp-stung grapes. Press stems, press dirt and rot.

But there's mildew and formic acid in the vats.

Add sulphur and tannic acid.

The smell from the ferment is not the rich odor of wine, but the smell of decay and chemicals.

Oh, well. It has alcohol in it, anyway. They can get drunk.

The little farmers watched debt creep up on them like the tide. They sprayed the trees and sold no crop, they pruned and grafted and could not pick the crop. And the men of knowledge have worked, have considered, and the fruit is rotting on the ground, and the decaying mash in the wine vat is poisoning the air. And taste the wine—no grape flavor at all, just sulphur and tannic acid and alcohol.

This little orchard will be a part of a great holding next year, for the debt will have choked the owner.

This vineyard will belong to the bank. Only the great owners can survive, for they own the canneries, too. And four pears peeled and cut in half, cooked and canned, still cost fifteen cents. And the canned pears do not spoil. They will last for years.

The decay spreads over the State, and the sweet smell is a great sorrow on the land. Men who can graft the trees and make the seed fertile and big can find no way to let the hungry people eat their produce. 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.

The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit—and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.

And the smell of rot fills the country.

Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.

There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate—died of malnutrition—because the food must rot, must be forced to rot.

The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; 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.