John Steinbeck-The Grapes of Wrath

The Most Popular Classic Bestsellers Books - John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath Info, Plot Summary, Review and John Steinbeck Biography

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Author: John Steinbeck

Book: The Grapes of Wrath (619 Pgs.)

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The narrative begins just after Tom Joad is paroled from McAlester prison for homicide. On his return to his home near Sallisaw, Oklahoma, Tom meets former preacher Jim Casy, whom he remembers from his childhood, and the two travel together. When they arrive at Tom's childhood farm home, they find it deserted. Disconcerted and confused, Tom and Casy meet their old neighbor, Muley Graves, who tells them the family has gone to stay at Uncle John Joad's home nearby. Graves tells them that the banks have evicted all the farmers, but he refuses to leave the area.

The next morning, Tom and Casy go to Uncle John's. Tom finds his family loading a Hudson saloon converted to a truck with the remains of their possessions; with their crops destroyed by the Dust Bowl, the family defaulted on their bank loans. As their farm is repossessed, the Joads have no option but to seek work in California, described in handbills as fruitful and offering high pay. The Joads put everything they have into making the journey. Although leaving Oklahoma would be breaking parole, Tom decides it is worth the risk, and invites Casy to join him and his family.

Traveling west on Route 66, the Joad family find the road crowded with other migrants. In makeshift camps, they hear many stories from others, some returning from California, and worry about lessening prospects. Along the road, Granpa dies and they bury him in a field; Granma dies close to the California state line; and both Noah (the eldest Joad son) and Connie Rivers (the husband of the pregnant Joad daughter, Rose of Sharon) split from the family. Led by Ma, the remaining members realize they can only continue, as nothing is left for them in Oklahoma.

Reaching California, they find the state oversupplied with labor, so wages are low and workers are taken advantage of. The big corporate farmers are in collusion, and smaller farmers suffer from collapsing prices. Weedpatch Camp, one of the clean, utility-supplied camps operated by the Resettlement Administration, a New Deal agency, offers better conditions, but does not have enough resources to care for all the needy families. As a Federal facility, the camp protects the migrants from harassment by California deputies.

In response to the exploitation, Casy becomes a labor organizer and tries to recruit for a labor union. The remaining Joads work as strikebreakers in a peach orchard where Casy is involved in a strike that eventually turns violent. When Tom Joad witnesses Casy's fatal beating, he kills the attacker and flees as a fugitive. The Joads later leave the orchard for a cotton farm, where Tom is at risk of arrest for the homicide.

He bids farewell to his mother, promising to work for the oppressed. Rose of Sharon's baby is stillborn. Ma Joad remains steadfast and forces the family through the bereavement. With rain, the Joads' dwelling is flooded, and they move to higher ground. In the final chapter of the book, the family take shelter from the flood in an old barn. Inside they find a young boy and his father, who is dying of starvation. Rose of Sharon takes pity on the man and offers him her breast, so that he can be saved from starvation.

Source: Wikipedia

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John Steinbeck-The Grapes of Wrath

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John Steinbeck-The Grapes of Wrath - Review
Reviewed by Eli Bendersky

It is not easy to write a review for a book you liked so much. Where do you start ? "The grapes of wrath" tells the story of the Joads - a family of farmers from Oklahoma during the great depression, who like many people of their class were pushed from the bank-owned land they lived on by the advances in farming machinery and drove to California in a search of a better life.

Hundreds of thousands of poor people flocked into the western state, where fruit-farm owners promised jobs in fruit picking. The problem was that in order to lower the labor wages, the farm owners tried to find many people for each single place of work, and because of this many of the newcomers were left living in hunger and terrible conditions, ready to grope any work available just to put food in the mouth of their children.

The storytelling is beautiful. Chapters of the family's progress in their quest are interspersed with chapters providing a more general view of the situation of those times - the misfortunes of so many in search of a respectable living. This book is full of criticism on the cutthroat capitalism that leaves so many people without food in their mouths and roof over their heads. However, contrary to many other works, the criticism here is implicit, and it doesn't present any other alternative as a clearly better one (like in more explicitly social works).

There's something very honest about it - the author just presents the situation as it is. The farm-owner cuts wages to the level at which people can hardly eat, but he has no choice - if he raises the wages, he won't be able to compete, and then his family won't be able to feed itself. It's that simple. I guess that to a thoughtful reader this book presents the problems of capitalism, but also hints that while it's no perfect, there is probably no better way to manage things. Another interesting point to which the author keeps returning is the dangerous saturation point at which there are hordes of hungry people around. When this happens, wrath and unrest are impossible to sustain and it may become an unmanageable problem. This is indeed something to consider.

One delightful aspect of the book is the language. All conversations are written in heavy southern-state American accent, which is a real pleasure to read - "this here car", "they's fellas", "should of figgered somepin'", "git drunk purty hard" and so on. I originally planned to write a part of this review humoristically using this accent, but when I finished the book it was obvious that there is nothing funny about it. The last third of the book is very sad, even tragic. Steinbeck has a knack for describing human misery which I can only compare to Hugo in Les Miserables. To conclude - this book is excellent, highly recommended.

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