"Grapes of Wrath" a Classic from American Literature Revisited

Remembering John Steinbeck’s Novel “Grapes of Wrath”

John Steinbeck's ‘The Grapes of Wrath ' is one of the classical American novels of all time. The novel took 3 years to write and is a book of passion about life of fellow Americans. The theme of the novel is to say the least unusual and relates the story of 300,000 farmers from Oklahoma, east Texas and Arkansas in U.S.A. who had to abandon their farms because of the great Depression and drought and had no choice but to migrate westwards towards California.

Steinbeck has created a character called  Tom Joad as the hero, who is head of one such family.  Joad is one of the migrants who has lost his livelihood and decides to travel west to California, which he assumed like others to be a land of plenty.

However, they were met there with hostility by the local people, who thought that the migrants (who became known as 'Okies') would take away their jobs or depress their wages by competition, and bring in slums and diseases. They jeered at the migrants, attacked them, and sometimes burned their camps.

John Steinbeck, aa great novelist

The migrant families lived in horrible conditions, without proper food, water or sanitation, and often travelling from place to place looking for work. Families which once owned a farm and raised vegetables, corn, chicken and pigs were now living in squalor in card board houses. Their clothes soiled, and barely enough food to eat.

Steinbeck brought out the horrors of America, which were buried under the carpet; People who were so poor that they could not buy food and drank water from dirty irrigation ditches.

In one poignant scene the novel describes how a young malnourished woman, Rose, whose own child died stillborn, breast feeds a starving old man who would have died otherwise.

  The novel describes vividly the journey of the Joad family from Oklahoma to California. On the way the, the grandparents die and some members of the family split and go away. The Joads allow a priest, Jim Casey, to join them on the way. Casey loses his belief in God on seeing the misery, and remarks “There’s no sin, and there am not no virtue, there's just stuff people do ". 

Writing the book became a single obsession for Steinbeck. He wrote 5 or 6 days a week,  and worked  himself to exhaustion.

Steinbeck called his novel ' The Grapes of Wrath '. Ripe grapes spill their juices when pressed for wine. The migrant families were ripe with wrath or anger that was ready to spill forth.

 Steinbeck's book was published in 1939 and created an uproar in America. Some people like California planters and big businessmen launched a campaign to defame Steinbeck and discredit his book. He was labeled a liar and accused of being swayed by communist ideas. All this greatly discouraged Steinbeck and he wondered where the world was heading.

 But there was a silver lining in Ms. Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of President Franklin Roosevelt who after visiting the migrant camps commented that Steinbeck had not exaggerated anything in the book 'Grapes of Wrath' “.

Henry Fonda in "Grapes of Wrath"

Hollywood paid its tribute to the novel and Twentieth Century Fox made Grapes of Wrath. The film starred Henry Fonda as Tom Joad. All credit to producer Darryl Zanuck who made the film exactly as Steinbeck had depicted. The Grapes of Wrath is one of my favorite Books and deserves all the accolades one can think off.