Friday’s Read it or Rant: The Grapes of Wrath

Alternate Title: Read it or Rant, 11:45 on Sunday counts as the weekend

Alternate Alternate Title: Dear God Why did I choose this book?

Oh, The Grapes. Sigh, I shoulda just watched the movie. You should just read my review and save the six hours it took me to read it. Really. I usually really like John Steinbeck, in fact East of Eden is one of my favorites. I picked The Grapes, because I wanted something deep, a thinker, something to counteract all the Sandra Boynton books I read each week. Yeah. Um, I was really wishing I was reading Hippos go Berserk three chapters in. I now think that John Steinbeck is a communist, racist, sexist, ageist, ignorant of female anatomy, homophobic, sadist, bipolar tool. I could go on for pages about all of the inconsistencies, and explanations for the above list but, eh. It has been done already by more qualified readers than I, so if you are interested go Google some reviews. Make sure you pick one that mentions the lack of editors during the Depression, that is the only explanation for this book! Now for the plot…only plot, don’t go looking to the Grapes for any characters you can’t describe in a five word sentence. One dimensional would be half a dimension too much. Anyway, on to the story…

The Grapes start with Tom Joad just after he is paroled from prison after serving four years for manslaughter (He kilt him a man with a shovel). As he walks home, he meets a preacher, (a former, disenfranchised minister) Jim Casy, who baptized him in a ditch when he was a kid, and Tom invites him home with him. When they arrive at the Joad home, they find it deserted. They are then off to his Uncle John’s residence a few miles away, where he finds his family loading an old clunker truck(the used car chapter was one of my favorites actually, very poetic) with everything they own; he learns that his family’s crops were destroyed in the Dust Bowl and that they were forced to default on loans, and they were “tractored off” (a tractor pushed over their house to make longer rows of cotton. Or corn. Or pot or whatever.) With their farm repossessed, the Joads put all their hope on yellow handbills that are distributed everywhere in Oklahoma (And Arkansas, and Kansas, oh and Missouri ), describing the beautiful country of California and the high pay you get for doing easy jobs, like picking peaches. (FWIW, I have picked peaches, and they are itchy, and the fuzz sticks to your arms, oh, and they are full of June Bugs). Okay, so anyway, the Joads, along with Jim Casy (hey, anybody notice who else has JC initials? hmm, not too creative are we Steinbeck?), are seduced by the handbills and invest everything they have into the exodus. Although leaving Oklahoma would be breaking parole, Tom decides that it is a risk he has to take.

Moving on, Grandpa and the dog die within the first 24 hours, they should have taken it as a sign and turned around. They soon discover that the roads are crowded with thousands of other families making the same trip all on the faith of those friggin yellow handbills. As the Joads continue and hear stories from other road weary travelers, and meet some coming BACK from California, they are starting to think that all may not be as the handbills promised. So by this time they are pretty much there, and they have to find work, because they can’t afford to go back! By the time they do get there Grandpa and Grandma (and the dog) are dead and Noah (the elder wackadoo Joad son) and Connie (the ((strangely named)) husband of the pregnant Joad daughter, ((strangely named))Rose of Sharon), have left, yup, just up and left.

The shriveling (in numbers and in weight—turns out not much to eat for migrants) family find hordes of applicants for every job and little (no) hope of finding a decent wage, because of the oversupply of dust bowlers. All they want is the simple American Dream: a house, a family, and a steady job. At first they have a glimmer of hope at the government camp, Weedpatch,(BEEP< BEEP<BEEP, COMMUNIST ALERT!). At Weedpatch they are clean, and safe, and have flushing toilets, but still no jobs, no food, and no money.

So they move on and find other laborers have begun to join unions (have I mentioned anywhere that I am a Republican, and how I feel about unions?). The surviving members of the family unknowingly work as strikebreakers on a peach orchard that is involved in a strike that eventually turns violent, killing the preacher Casy and forcing Tom Joad to kill again and become a fugitive(again or still or whatever). As he bids farewell to his mother in a (supposedly tear jerking) speech (whatever, I am just pushing through at this point, the end and my Marie Clarie are near!), and promises that no matter what happens, he will be a tireless advocate for the oppressed. Blah, blah, Yada, Yada. Rose of Sharon’s baby is stillborn (this would have been more sad if she were not such a sniveling moron((and she is supposed to be the Madonna archetype?!?)). Ma Joad keeps the family moving(if not the plot) and forces the family to leave another camp that has been flooded out. It is winter, and there is NO work. They have NO money, and NO hope. In the end, (next sentence is not mine, Thank God. I just stole it so that you could see how full of himself Mr. Steinbeck truly is) Rose of Sharon commits the only act in the book that is not futile: she breast feeds a starving man, still trying to show hope in humanity after her own negative experience. This final act is said to illustrate the spontaneous mutual sharing that will lead to a new awareness of collective values. Okay, whatever you say. As for the part about her breastfeeding, shall I point out how wrong this is? Cause ya know, I know a thing or two about breast feeding. No, I will move on! YEAH book OVER! Yippee!

So I copied and pasted some of the symbolic parts of the book, all VERY obvious, a ninth grader could have caught each of them, so read them for you’re your own edification, and so you can win the The Grapes of Wrath Section of Jeopardy with out having to actually, you know, read it.

The turtle in Chapter 3 is a metaphor for the working class farmers whose struggles are recounted in the novel. Significantly, the dangers posed to the turtle are those of modernity and business. The intrusion of cars and the building of highways endangers the turtle, and the truck that strikes the turtle is a symbol of big business and commerce. The struggling of the turtle also evokes the workings of narratives in general, since the trajectory of the turtle mimics the trajectory of the novel: moments of action and pauses, slow process, peripecias. This land turtle becomes a proleptic device for the following chapters.

Rose of Sharon’s pregnancy holds the promise of a new beginning. This promise is broken when she delivers a stillborn baby. However, the family moves boldly and gracefully forward, rather than slipping into despair, and the novel ends on a hopeful note.

There are numerous Judeo-Christian symbols throughout the novel. The Joad Family, like the Israelites, are homeless and persecuted people looking for the promised land. Jim Casy can be viewed as a symbol of Jesus Christ, who began his mission after a period of solitude in the wilderness. When the group first leave for their journey West, there are thirteen of them, representing Jesus Christ and the twelve apostles. Like Jesus, Jim offers himself as the sacrifice to save his people. Jim’s last words to the man who murdered him was: “Listen, you fellas don’ know what you’re doing,” similar to Jesus’s “Father forgive them; they know not what they do.” Tom becomes Jim’s disciple after his death.

A great flood at the end of the novel is related in the Bible as the story of Noah and the Great Flood. A flood symbolizes uncontained water, which has gone beyond the basic boundary between the earth and water. Floods also symbolize the end of one cycle of time and the beginning of a new cycle of time. Therefore, a flood symbolizes both death and regenerative birth at the same time. The image in which Uncle John disposes of the stillborn baby recalls Moses being sent down the Nile River, suggesting that the family, like the Hebrews in Egypt, will be delivered from the slavery of its present circumstances.

Next up for the Read it or Rant? I don’t know yet. I will pick something up at the library tomorrow, and let you know.

Filed under Read it or Rant | Comments (11)