The Grapes of Wrath

I don't think I was ready to read this book the first time I read (part of) it, way back when I was 17 or so, for an english class. There is too much that would have been foreign to me (the past is another country and all that), and the themes of solidarity among poor folks, of the strength and weaknesses of family (which I will always say as “fambly” now, in my head, thanks to this book) were just as foreign to me as earning a dollar a day to feed one's family is.

I do wish I had read it fifteen or so years ago, though, when I was working in a straight-up retail environment, for fairly large companies–the book makes clear how, much of the time, “I'm just doing my job” is another way to say “the system is fucked up, I recognize that, but I'm trying to survive, just like you are”. “The owners” rig the game from the start, and that rigging includes a divide-and-conquer strategy that does much of the work of keeping people in line. A small example from retail: Most companies don't allow one to disclose how much one earns. This is ostensibly to keep things “private”, but really it is to ensure that folks don't band together, realizing that the game is rigged by looking at how much some folks make vs. what other folks make.

The central theme that will stay with me from the book, though, is how well Steinbeck communicates that people want to work–they want an honest day's pay for that work, but they would rather work than not work. This is something that folks who have never been poor often don't quite understand: Human beings like to feel like we are contributing to something, like we are building something bigger than ourselves. We like to work with other people–we are social animals. Creating, working, playing–these are all inextricably intertwined, and if they're not all engaged in a person, slow death happens. The Grapes of Wrath conveys this wonderfully.


Less clear is the theme that the workers will “rise up” someday, in anger, and take what they deserve–this theme runs deeply in the book, but also doesn't paint a picture that gives room in reality for this happening. By the end of the book, the little hope that exists seems to be eclipsed by the foundations of power that have already been laid by “the owners”.

ps: The book is not perfect, of course, and is a product of its time. Race and gender aren't dealt with much at all, and there are some glaring problems with how the family treats black folks and native americans (who are both almost nonexistent in the book, which also seems unlikely). That said, as a snapshot of one family that can be generalized in various ways, it's also a universalizable story.