A spiritual journey inside a beat-up old truck!

The Guardian quoted The Grapes Of Wrath as “a terrible and indignant book; yet it is not without passages of lyrical beauty…” I have to say that I totally agree with the review, however the term “indignant” strikes me as ironic since the book’s moral values lies on the people’s inhumane expression of their anger or as the Steinbeck puts it, wrath. The Grapes Of Wrath was considered as one of the most important books ever of American literature, alongside other powerful classics such as The Scarlet Letter and The Great Gatsby. And yet, not only do I have to agree again with such praises and accountability the book has respectively received, but also I could subjectively and undeniably state that The Grapes Of Wrath is my favorite book ever (which considering the fact that I am not American), cramming Hemingway’s Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises to my No.2 spot. The Grapes Of Wrath is a book of conscience. It is a work of art that speaks of a voice, the voice of hundreds of American farmers whose children are dying of malnutrition and starvation. It is an account of reality. It is the story of an injured truth. It is more than fiction. It is American.

THE BOOK

The book was written on the perspective of the Joad family, a family rooted on the farmlands of Oklahoma. Like other families during their time, the Joads were unconscientiously driven out of their lands because the “Bank” was claiming it all up. The Joads, not knowing whom to blame or what to do, were compelled to leave their homeland and engage on a cross-country road trip for the “fields and orchards of California.” Taking as much as they could of their possessions, they rode on a beat-up truck for about two weeks, where a considerable length of the novel was spent, conjuring the desperations and depressions that were eloquently felt by each member of the family. The “fambly” was comprised of Tom, the second eldest son of the Tom Joad and Ma Joad; Noah, the eccentrically silent firstborn child; Rose of Sharon, the eldest female of the family, who travels with Connie Rivers, the father of the child she carries in her womb; Grampa Joad and Granma Joad, whose hearts for their homeland were death-bound; Uncle Joad, a drunkard who blamed himself relentlessly for the loss of his wife; Jim Casy, the pensive ex-preacher who was in the process of rediscovering his moral and spiritual self (although he wasn’t a member of the family, he tagged in along with them with the help of Tom); and finally the youngest member of the Joads: Ruthie and Winfield Joads, whose mischievous innocence served as the only enlightenment in this so-called “terrible” book.

After losing several family members during the course of the journey, the family finally arrives on the hills of California. And that was when they realized the true graveness of the situation. The “promised land” as it was conceived, was but a “scene of labor camps, hungry people and broken dreams.” A place of “elemental conflict between the migrant workers and company thugs.” With the disintegration of the only hope they’ve got, the remaining family of Joads set out deeper into California in search of meager work and social equality.

THE CHARACTERS

The Joad family is a family that would undergo severe changes during the course of the book. Steinbeck etched out his characters with great skill that they were surely to provoke emotional responses from his readers. His characters were truly heartfelt, and served as one of the key factors for the book to receive such unprecedented praise and approval.

Tom, the main character of the novel, was a murder convict set out on parole in the beginning of the book. At first, his main reason for setting out in California was to find work and help reestablish the family in their new home, however with the influence of Casy, Tom later in the end of the book began to realize the true essence of Casy’s vision and soon decides to leave his family to become a strike worker. Jim Casy (one of my favorite characters in the book), on the other hand, saw the vision that each person was not only of one soul but is living under a single unified soul with the others, and so he became a strike worker that soon inspired Tom to follow him. Unfortunately, Jim Casy was killed during a riot. One of my personal reasons why I loved this character was because of his alleged affiliation with the biblical savior Jesus Christ. Bearing the initials J.C., Casy paralleled Christ’s vision of a new religion based on love and an all-inclusive soul, where a person does not live for oneself and the people he loves but rather lives for each and every other of his kind. And to further clarify this Casy-Christ bond, Casy, before he was killed, uttered to the company thugs the words “You fellas don’ know what you’re doin’,” paralleling Christ’s dying words on the cross.

The other members of the family: Tom Joad, the patriarch of the family, was soon replaced by Ma Joad as the commander of the family. Ma Joad yearned to keep the family from falling apart, and served as the strength that kept the family to move forward. Throughout the novel, she thought her daughter, Rose of Sharon, to be strong in front of the fecklessness and promises of her husband, Connie, who abandoned her and her child. Rose of Sharon remained willful and very stubborn during the whole length of the novel, yearning for milk when the family couldn’t afford it. However, in the final scene of the book, Rose of Sharon, after giving birth to a stillborn baby, finally completes her change and vows to live through the values of unselfishness no matter what, and this is revealed through her act of breastfeeding a dying man in the closing scene.

There are still a lot of other things to say about the other characters but I feel that I’ve already written down too much and what I’ve written down was enough to convince the viewer of the “provocativity” of this book. One of the great experiences I’ve had with this book was that I grew with the characters in this book, shared their sufferings and mere satisfactions and I wouldn’t spoil those things for you. You shall be amazed at how much I’ve still left out of the characters I’ve described and be struck with awe at how much depth Steinbeck has conjured in his characters. Along with the evocative plot structure of the novel, the character structures of this book are truly fascinating.

THE STYLE

John Steinbeck didn’t just limit his perspective with regards to the Joads. Especially during the odd-numbered chapters, Steinbeck has squeezed in a number of interlude chapters that contained a wider span of the general plot than that being witnessed by the Joads. At the first few interlude chapters, John Steinbeck wrote of a land turtle that was making its way across a ditch, which generally symbolized the dignity of the human spirit to hope and succeed against numerous obstacles no matter what, just like the turtle did when it was ran over by a car and had to start its way all over again. Then later in the interlude, Steinbeck took the perspective of a car salesman, who was pressuring the farmer customers on the integrity of their service even though he stressed out onto his co-workers to take advantage of the gullible customers. Then later again, Steinbeck would write about the experiences of another family who was trying to buy a loaf of bread from a gasoline station bar. Through these interludes, Steinbeck is able to stress out the true situation in America during the Depression era outside the perspective of his main characters.

With regards to his literary qualities, Steinbeck made his impression on me as one of the most intelligent writers I’ve ever read. His prose was mild and though nothing spectacular, the potency and aesthetic profundity of his words were what mesmerized me. His sentences contained intelligence, and heartfelt meaning that truly outweighed his lack of sentence exquisiteness, which was just appropriate for the kind of books he published.

IMPACT

One of the most memorable scenes for me from the book was when Uncle Joad was asked to bury the stillborn baby that Rose of Sharon gave birth to. But instead of burying it, he let it afloat onto the river and told it to give a message to the people. He said, “Go down an’ tell ‘em. Go down in the street an’ rot an’ tell ‘em that way. That’s the way you can talk. Don’t even know if you was a boy or a girl. Ain’t gonna find out. Go on down now, an’ lay in the street. Maybe they’ll now then,” signifying the deaths of the farmer’s children that were being caused by the wrath of the people.

The Grapes Of Wrath is truly a magnificent work of art. In my opinion, I think that there is no other book out there that’s going to be as conscientious and provocative as this book. And although numerous critics have denied the authenticity and veracity of this book, claiming that the situation during the Depression era was never as severe as what was described in the novel, this novel shall still stand as the voice of millions of impoverished families out there that we “lucky people” seemed to have turned a blind sight on and that this literary work shall serve not only as a masterpiece but also as a true work of art by an author who possessed the eyes that saw America, the hands that wrote it and the heart that truly felt it.