The Grapes of Wrath

Back to the books, after an incredible couple of months involving marriage, honeymoon and moving.  Thank you and much love to all my wonderful friends and family, and my beautiful wife.

I finished reading The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, back in May, and since then this post has percolated through the ruminative mesh of my gray matter.  Most people who've read this book at all have done so in high school.  Speaking for myself, I would have hated this book as a student.  The prose often sags under its pendulous proselytizing for communist ideals, decrying the evil industrialized capitalist Machine.  To Steinbeck capitalism is dehumanizing, a point hammered home again and again in passages such as this: "The man sitting in the iron seat [of the tractor] did not look like a man; gloved, goggled, rubber dust mask over nose and mouth, he was a part of the monster, a robot in the seat... He loved the land no more than the bank loved the land."  The tractor's seeders are described thusly: "orgasms set by gears, raping methodically, raping without passion." And "Men ate what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread."  Interlude chapters pepper the book with a chorus of similar grievances, and inevitably the message bleeds explicitly into the main narrative at times, subtly at first and waxing towards the climax.  The propagandist nature of this book is no accident, and the interweaving of politics and plot make for a strong impact in the end.  The author seems to suggest the tragedy of the Joads could be avoided if only Communism were embraced.  It's therefore no surprise that the book was burned, banned and hotly debated for decades after its publication.

The plot goes something like this: the Joads are a family on a farm forced to abandon their home because of the Dust Bowl.  They hear stories of opportunity in California, and they head West.  This book starts out grim and things just get worse the entire time.  On the journey their numbers dwindle.  When they arrive in California they are forced to work for almost nothing and live in deplorable conditions, and their numbers keep dwindling.  The final scene is downright haunting, and Louis CK described it humorously in his most recent special.  This was the saddest book I can ever recall reading, but it succeeds tremendously in its heart-crushing tragedy.  It certainly makes the troubles in my life seem small.  All in all this book gets an A+ for such a compelling story that at first seems weighted down under its ambition, but in the end shines darkly in its pitiful portrayal of great struggle.

By the way, keep an eye out for the new film version involving Steven Spielberg.

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