The Grapes of Wrath [Versión Kindle]

The book is beautifully written. Steinbeck's style flows so smoothly and is so accessible. The book follows the Joad family for about nine months as they are driven from the place they've called home for generations and travel to California, only to find out that it is not the land of opportunity they expected. Steinbeck's formula here is to intersperse the lengthy chapters chronicling the Joads' journey with short chapters that encapsulate some nuance about the period or the people, giving you a picture of the greater struggle taking place, of which the Joads are just a small part. It creates a very powerful effect. This migration west involved hundreds of thousands of individuals. You see in a few pages the big picture, then you are pulled back into the intimacies of the Joads' lives and the tragedy is made very personal. In one especially startling example, Steinbeck puts these words into the mouth of a character after selling a nameless migrant and his family some gas for their car, "Well, you and me got sense. Them goddamn Okies got no sense and no feeling. They ain't human. A human being wouldn't live like they do. A human being couldn't stand it to be so dirty and miserable. They ain't a hell of a lot better than gorillas." In the next chapter, the Joads make camp along a stream and Ma is so happy for the clean water and the chance to stay put for a day so that she can take a bath and wash the family's clothes. The Joads are good, honest, decent people looking for the means to earn an honest wage and thereby feed their family. The thought of charity repels them. At one point Pa talks about the prospect of picking cotton and is so excited about the fact that it's good, hard work, worthy of the wage he'll earn. How soft and incredibly privileged it makes us all seem. "They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless - restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do - to lift, to push, to pull, to pick, to cut - anything, any burden to bear, for food."

I live in a citrus community in Florida, which is populated by a large number of migrant workers. It never occurred to me to wonder how they felt about their lives. I never thought to wonder if they had dreams of someday owning their own home and staying put for a while. I've read criticism that "The Grapes of Wrath" is a communist manifesto. It may have socialist leanings, but how long can individuals or a society overlook the less fortunate without feeling some shame? Read this book. It should be mandatory, but would be wasted on most teenagers. Pick it up as an adult, as I did, and read it. You'll never again look at others or yourself in the same way.

Steinbeck concentrated on the circumstances of one family, The Joads, tenant farmers in Oklahoma until they were forced out by the larger companies who wanted their land back. With dreams of luscious grapes and peaches in abundance waiting to be picked, they loaded up their belongings and began their journey on Route 66 headed for Bakersfield, California. They began their trip with a bevy of colorful characters led by Ma and Pa Joad. It's amazing how much power Steinbeck gave to Ma Joad -- years before women had any right to a voice. Unfortunately, just as the Joads were heading out, so were thousands upon thousands of other families. This would ultimately lead to supply and demand. There would be too many workers for the few jobs available and, consequently, people would be agreeing to work for peanuts just to be able to feed their families.

Steinbeck's writing is astounding as the unrest of the migrants builds to a crescendo and just as the dust has risen in Oklahoma, so will the voices of the poor migrant workers. Steinbeck says, "In the eyes of the hungry, there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people, the grapes of wrath are growing heavy." It is just a matter of time before their wrath is unleashed and you can feel it in every page you turn. He says that, "Our people are good people; our people are kind people. Pray God some day kind people won't all be poor. Pray God someday a kid can eat." I don't know how you can read some of his words and not get teary eyed. But sixty years have passed since the writing of this book and there are still migrant stories to be told and kids who have no food to eat yet sadly the world continues despite its injustices.

I won't kid you into believing that this is an easy book to read. The first 150 pages are so slow going that I almost had to put it down. But I kept on going just as the Joad's kept on going and I'm certainly glad I did. We could all take a lesson from their quest for survival and their quest just to be able to eat the next day. Their determination, in light of all the obstacles they had to face, is truly a lesson to be learned. You feel a sense of accomplishment after reading a book like this -- I know I did.

The Joads and thousands of others are driven out of Oklahoma by drought and the Depression. It is bad enough they lose their farms to homes and have to move. It is worse that the big business fruit growers in California print misleading flyers claiming to have far more well-paying jobs available than they ever intended to have. It is miserable when they get to California (where the people curse them as "Okies") and find out that as few as one man owns as much a million acres--much of it lying fallow in front of their eyes.

As difficult as the plight of the Joads and families like them, Steinbeck does not paint the Californians or their police as evil so much as scared into treachery and violence in order to protect their own. No one wants to starve and starvation after the dust bowl and thanks to the exploitative wages paid by the vineyard owners is a very real possibility. Nor does he canonize the migrants--the societies that grow up by the side of the road each night have their own laws and lawbreakers, stout hearts and slatterns--but does show them as civilized people who don't deserve being treated like animals. Many fearful Californians don't agree.

Steinbeck's character Tom Joad (whose ghost lives on in a Bruce Springsteen's song recently covered by Rage Against the Machine) is as important to American literature as Huckleberry Finn, Holden Caulfield and Jay Gatsby. Joad knows life offers no simple solutions, but he also knows that fair is fair. When a man's employers charge him for his work gear AND operate the stores where he must buy his food so that he often ends up OWING his employers more at the end of the week than his pitiful wages can cover, Tom Joad knows that's not just. He knows the land is fertile enough to feed everyone, so don't try giving him any speeches about "private property" and "supply and demand." If the test of a system and a society is how it treats it poorest members (especially in a crisis like the Depression), then the world the Joads live in fails miserably.

No less strong a character than her son Tom, Ma Joad embodies all the cliches about being a tower of strength without actually being a cliché herself. She and her family possess all the true grit and hearty spirit America prides itself on as a nation of pioneers, but by the 1930s the frontier has been bought up and the pioneers are in desperate straits.

This book is occasionally criticized for being too socialistic. This criticism is misguided; what THE GRAPES OF WRATH does is show how capitalism can and often does enrich the few while the many suffer. Steinbeck shows how breadbasket farmers were thrown off the land they had worked for generations so bankers in the East can make more profit. Can this happen today, even in a time of tremendous prosperity? Ask today's family farmers what agribusiness has done to them. THE GRAPES OF WRATH is no call to play the "Internationale," but it does starkly and intelligently raise questions about the meaning of equal opportunity and justice for all.

This is a book that should be required reading for Alan Greenspan, the editors of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, and triumphal capitalists everywhere who wince for their stock dividends when the unemployment rate goes down. Not to mention every single elected official in the United States. The subject matter is extremely heavy and sad, but Steinbeck's style is straightforward and easy (even with the various dialects he employs perfectly). THE GRAPES OF WRATH does what so very few great novels can: it will take a lot out of you, but leave you with much more than you had when you began.