The Grapes of Wrath

This article is about the novel ‘The Grapes of Wrath’, for other meanings see Grapes of Wrath (disambiguation).. For other uses, see The Grapes of Wrath (disambiguation).

File:TheGrapesOfWrathBookCover.jpg

The cover of The Grapes of Wrath

The Grapes of Wrath is a work of fiction written by John Steinbeck and published in 1939. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and it is frequently read in American high school and college literature classes. A celebrated Hollywood film version was made in 1940, starring Henry Fonda and directed by John Ford.

Set in the Great Depression, the popular proletarian novel, in which descriptive, narrative, and philosophical passages succeed one another, tells the story of a family of sharecroppers, the Joads — 'Okie' farmers driven from their land by drought and the Dust Bowl, and forced to endure the hardships of migrant workers moving West. Note the similarity to the name Job (pronounced like "Jobe"), a man from the Old Testament that suffered greatly when tested by God, but remained faithful. The novel details the nearly hopeless situation of the downtrodden American farmer in the years of the Great Depression, and emphasizes cooperative solutions to the social problems brought about by industrialization.

Steinbeck experienced a rough time coming up with a title for the epic. "The Grapes of Wrath", suggested by his wife, Carol, deemed more suitable than any of the names John himself 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 has trampled out the vintage where the Grapes of Wrath are stored,
He has loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible, swift sword,
His Truth is marching on!"

This phrase originally comes from a passage from the Book of Revelation: "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" (14:19).

Steinbeck wrote this book, along with Of Mice and Men, in what is now Monte Sereno, California, in his home at 16250 Greenwood Lane. When he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature (1962), the Swedish Academy called the book "an epic chronicle".

Plot summary

Tom Joad is released from prison after serving time for manslaughter, and returns to find his parents' farm deserted. Finding his family nearby, he discovers that they are planning to leave for California. Like other Oklahoma farmers, they have seen their crops ruined by the Dust Bowl. Eastern banks and corporate farmers are repossessing the land, and the Joads have little choice but to look for work in the orchards and fields out west.

They are joined by a former preacher, named Casy, and a couple they meet on the road.

En route to California, they discover the roads are choked with thousands of similarly-situated refugees, and that money is tight. They begin to suspect California may not be the answer to their problems. The elderly Joad grandparents, symbols of the old ways, die on the road to California. One of the sons, Noah, leaves the family en route to fend for himself.

Upon arrival, they find there are dozens or scores of applicants for every job, and there is little to no hope of finding a stable community in which to live, or even of a steady income that can purchase the food they need to live. Their family is broken apart as the pregnant Rose of Sharon's husband, Connie, leaves to seek better opportunities.

In response to the exploitation of this labor surplus, the workers begin to join trade unions, and the surviving members of the family are involved in strikes that turn violent. Tom Joad, the protagonist, kills a man, and must become a fugitive, promising that no matter where he runs, he will be a tireless advocate for the common man against the powerful. Rose-of-Sharon miscarries at the conclusion of the novel, but the family shows resoluteness in the face of defeat by committing themselves to help the other members of their community. this book was so horrid it made me cry out my ass

In film

• A film version was produced by Darryl F. Zanuck in 1940. John Ford won the Academy Award for Directing, as did Jane Darwell for Best Supporting Actress. Other nominations were 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. This film has subsequently been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

it also blows and was thrown together cause of a dead line. Don't mind him he's a Junior.

In popular song

• Woody Guthrie wrote The Ballad of Tom Joad the night he saw the film. He described the film in a column:

"Shows the dam bankers men that broke us and the dust that choked us, and comes right out in plain old English and says what to do about it.

"It says you got to get together and have some meetins, and stick together, and raise old billy hell till you get youre job, and get your farm back, and your house and your chickens and your groceries and your clothes, and your money back" (reprinted in Woody Sez [New York, 1975], p. 133).

• In 1995 Bruce Springsteen released an album entitled The Ghost of Tom Joad (featuring a song of the same name, which was later covered by Rage Against The Machine, and most recently covered by José González of Junip).

See also

• T.C. Boyle's The Tortilla Curtain (1995) for a novel with a similar subject matter.

External links

• Steinbeck's myth of the Okies. For a more sympathetic assessment of the accuracy of Steinbeck's novel, see Carey McWilliams' "California Pastoral," which is included in the Viking Critical Edition of The Grapes of Wrath.
• Death in the Dust: John Steinbeck's first-person account of the conditions he observed at a California squatter's camp.
• Slashdoc : The Grapes of Wrath Analytical essays of the novel
• The Grapes of Wrath at IMDb