John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath is a tough work for me to review. Literature of the Modernist Era is one of my less frequently visited eras of the last 250 years because isn’t wholly to my taste. My favorite writers of the period (E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Edith Wharton) may have rejected Victorian optimism for a more complex view of the world, but their works still take place within the familiar and elegant realm of privileged society and manners. Aside from reading a few novellas in high school (Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and Steinbeck’s own Of Mice and Men), The Grapes of Wrath is my first plunge into the full gloominess of Modernism. How could a book that captures so well the desperation of some of our nation’s darkest years be anything else?
My mind isn't exactly attuned to dissect the stylistic aspects of a Modernist novel. Little more than story, characters, and a vague idea of the quality of prose register while I’m reading. Steinbeck stated that his novel has at least five layers, but what those could be is beyond me. For a literary analysis you should definitely look elsewhere.
The story begins with Tom Joad returning home on parole after serving 4 years in prison for manslaughter. As he arrives at his parents’ Oklahoma farm, he finds them packed up and ready to leave, the impossible weather conditions in the dust bowl making it futile to even try to feed themselves, much less raise crops. There is promise of work in California and so, like hundreds of thousands of other farming families of the great plains, they head west to realize that promise.
On almost every page of this marvelous tour-de-force Steinbeck made me realize one more thing I take for granted. There are dozens of routes from the plains to California these days. Back then there was only Highway 66. Cars are reasonably dependable nowadays. The Joads had no idea how far their overcrowded, overburdened truck would get before something broke. There were no mechanics every 30 miles and the Joads had no way to pay them even if there were. They had to figure out how to patch up the problem or they would starve on the side of the road. If they ran out of gas they would starve on the side of the road. If one of them died, the rest had no choice but to break the law and bury them on the side of the road. No one could help others in difficulty much, for everyone was in the same boat. For the Joads, it wasn’t a mere road trip, it was a hazardous trek worthy of any pioneer.
Once the Joads get to their destination, they find what all their fellow migrant farmers are discovering: California is no promised land. The great number of “Okies” threaten many of the Californians, so prejudice abounds. Migrant workers are exploited as cheap labor, and they put up with it because their only alternative is to starve. What work there is is temporary, lasting a few weeks at most. The Joads’ only peaceful interlude from the constant threat of danger and starvation is a short stay in a government camp (as opposed to the other camps in peril every day of being burned out for trespassing), where the occupants govern themselves, avoiding the harshness of the outside lawmen. Even in these camps everyone, it seems, is living on borrowed time in the hope that some real work will turn up. A second fear the Joads must fight is the breaking up of their family which, in Ma Joad's mind, is almost akin to starvation.
The novel is every bit as bleak as it sounds in description. What makes it great is how vivid the story is, so vivid that I doubt if some of these images will ever leave me. Steinbeck knows how to create a raw scene that punches like a movie in the mind. The characters may be representing the everyman, but there is something larger than life about Ma and Tom Joad, the former preacher Jim Casy, even Rose of Sharon (or Rosasharn, as her family calls her). The close of the novel doesn’t leave much hope for a happy ending for the family by any means, but there is a promise that these hardy individuals, even while the world is repeatedly collapsing around them, will persevere. They will keep going and keep trying through whatever befalls them. Even if death takes them along the way, it isn’t a tragic end, only part of the journey. The tragedy would only be for them to give up. Ma Joad says it well in this passage from Chapter 28:
The beauty of the Joad’s story is in their daily perseverance, even when there’s a good chance they won’t make it. The other inspiring aspect is the sense of community that grows between the struggling families. Others help the Joads as much as they can, and they help others in return. The degree and nature of that help varies according the situation. This theme reaches its culmination in two characters: Tom and Rose of Sharon. Unfortunately, going into detail would involve spoilers.
On the flip side, there is another story told, one that angers and unsettles. This is one stylistic aspect I can comment on. Each chapter alternates between the Joads’ story and parallel sketches of the Dust Bowl peoples as a whole. These chapters are a two-fold effective way of registering the emotional weight of the main narrative. First of all, we get the larger picture of what is happening in the country and its people. Some may dismiss those chapters as a history lesson, but in this context they add gravity to the Joad’s experience. We see the possibilities of what could happen to them through what many others are enduring. Plenty of bad things happened to them, but they weren’t pelted with every bad fortune--there were plenty more misfortunes that they didn’t experience. Through these chapters we also see the general mood that settled over the nation and the peoples within it. This mood isn’t a literary device. It’s a reality, as we can observe in the emotional and political climate hovering over our nation during our own economically difficult time.
These chapters do slow down the story’s pacing, but that is also an effective result. The story needs to be slow-paced to be an accurate reflection of its subject. Steinbeck creates a sense of the waiting, and waiting that the Joads have to endure without throwing in needless filler.
That’s all I have to remark upon, and I know I only mentioned a fraction of the scope of this novel. Even the celebrated Biblical imagery is lost on me. I can easily recognize The Grapes of Wrath as a great novel and I highly recommend it, but it’s one that I doubt I will ever reread. Neither does it change my perspective on Modernist literature as something I can only take in infrequent doses. As thought provoking as it is, as much as engrossed as I was every time I picked it up, I am reminded again how difficult it is for me to deal emotionally with that dull gloom that settles when I read such a book.
My mind isn't exactly attuned to dissect the stylistic aspects of a Modernist novel. Little more than story, characters, and a vague idea of the quality of prose register while I’m reading. Steinbeck stated that his novel has at least five layers, but what those could be is beyond me. For a literary analysis you should definitely look elsewhere.
The story begins with Tom Joad returning home on parole after serving 4 years in prison for manslaughter. As he arrives at his parents’ Oklahoma farm, he finds them packed up and ready to leave, the impossible weather conditions in the dust bowl making it futile to even try to feed themselves, much less raise crops. There is promise of work in California and so, like hundreds of thousands of other farming families of the great plains, they head west to realize that promise.
On almost every page of this marvelous tour-de-force Steinbeck made me realize one more thing I take for granted. There are dozens of routes from the plains to California these days. Back then there was only Highway 66. Cars are reasonably dependable nowadays. The Joads had no idea how far their overcrowded, overburdened truck would get before something broke. There were no mechanics every 30 miles and the Joads had no way to pay them even if there were. They had to figure out how to patch up the problem or they would starve on the side of the road. If they ran out of gas they would starve on the side of the road. If one of them died, the rest had no choice but to break the law and bury them on the side of the road. No one could help others in difficulty much, for everyone was in the same boat. For the Joads, it wasn’t a mere road trip, it was a hazardous trek worthy of any pioneer.
Once the Joads get to their destination, they find what all their fellow migrant farmers are discovering: California is no promised land. The great number of “Okies” threaten many of the Californians, so prejudice abounds. Migrant workers are exploited as cheap labor, and they put up with it because their only alternative is to starve. What work there is is temporary, lasting a few weeks at most. The Joads’ only peaceful interlude from the constant threat of danger and starvation is a short stay in a government camp (as opposed to the other camps in peril every day of being burned out for trespassing), where the occupants govern themselves, avoiding the harshness of the outside lawmen. Even in these camps everyone, it seems, is living on borrowed time in the hope that some real work will turn up. A second fear the Joads must fight is the breaking up of their family which, in Ma Joad's mind, is almost akin to starvation.
The novel is every bit as bleak as it sounds in description. What makes it great is how vivid the story is, so vivid that I doubt if some of these images will ever leave me. Steinbeck knows how to create a raw scene that punches like a movie in the mind. The characters may be representing the everyman, but there is something larger than life about Ma and Tom Joad, the former preacher Jim Casy, even Rose of Sharon (or Rosasharn, as her family calls her). The close of the novel doesn’t leave much hope for a happy ending for the family by any means, but there is a promise that these hardy individuals, even while the world is repeatedly collapsing around them, will persevere. They will keep going and keep trying through whatever befalls them. Even if death takes them along the way, it isn’t a tragic end, only part of the journey. The tragedy would only be for them to give up. Ma Joad says it well in this passage from Chapter 28:
“...Man, he lives in jerks--baby born an’ a man dies, an’ that’s a jerk--gets a farm an’ loses his farm, an’ that’s a jerk. Woman, it’s all one flow, like a stream, little eddies, little waterfalls, but the river, it goes right on. Woman looks at it like that. We ain’t gonna die out. People is goin’ on--changin’ a little, maybe, but goin’ right on.”
“How can you tell?” Uncle John demanded. “What’s to keep ever’thing from stoppin’’ all the folks from jus’ gittin’ tired an’ layin’ down?”
Ma considered. She rubbed the shiny back of one hand with the other, pushed the fingers of her right hand between the fingers of her left. “Hard to say,” she said. “Ever’thing we do--seems to me is aimed right at goin’ on. Seems that way to me. Even gettin’ hungry--even bein’ sick; some die, but the rest is tougher. Jus’ try to live the day, jus’ the day.”
The beauty of the Joad’s story is in their daily perseverance, even when there’s a good chance they won’t make it. The other inspiring aspect is the sense of community that grows between the struggling families. Others help the Joads as much as they can, and they help others in return. The degree and nature of that help varies according the situation. This theme reaches its culmination in two characters: Tom and Rose of Sharon. Unfortunately, going into detail would involve spoilers.
On the flip side, there is another story told, one that angers and unsettles. This is one stylistic aspect I can comment on. Each chapter alternates between the Joads’ story and parallel sketches of the Dust Bowl peoples as a whole. These chapters are a two-fold effective way of registering the emotional weight of the main narrative. First of all, we get the larger picture of what is happening in the country and its people. Some may dismiss those chapters as a history lesson, but in this context they add gravity to the Joad’s experience. We see the possibilities of what could happen to them through what many others are enduring. Plenty of bad things happened to them, but they weren’t pelted with every bad fortune--there were plenty more misfortunes that they didn’t experience. Through these chapters we also see the general mood that settled over the nation and the peoples within it. This mood isn’t a literary device. It’s a reality, as we can observe in the emotional and political climate hovering over our nation during our own economically difficult time.
These chapters do slow down the story’s pacing, but that is also an effective result. The story needs to be slow-paced to be an accurate reflection of its subject. Steinbeck creates a sense of the waiting, and waiting that the Joads have to endure without throwing in needless filler.
That’s all I have to remark upon, and I know I only mentioned a fraction of the scope of this novel. Even the celebrated Biblical imagery is lost on me. I can easily recognize The Grapes of Wrath as a great novel and I highly recommend it, but it’s one that I doubt I will ever reread. Neither does it change my perspective on Modernist literature as something I can only take in infrequent doses. As thought provoking as it is, as much as engrossed as I was every time I picked it up, I am reminded again how difficult it is for me to deal emotionally with that dull gloom that settles when I read such a book.
3 comments:
Maybe I read this when I was too young. I recognized that the writing in the book was possibly the most skillful I had ever read, but I didn't enjoy it. I know many people will say that it's not about enjoyment, it's about the feel and the knowledge that he imparts. I say, if it's not enjoyable, why read it?
I say again that I prefer East of Eden.
If you enjoyed East of Eden more than this, then I will definitely read it eventually. I love the movie! I want to watch The Grapes of Wrath movie again, now.
I want to say I'm looking forward to reading this book, now that you have handed it over to me, but looking forward to isn't exactly the way to describe the feeling of anticipation that comes when one is about to read a work that puts one through a wringer. We need to talk about this.
Post a Comment