The Grapes of Wrathby

John Steinbeck

John Ernst Steinbeck

Born Feb. 27, 1902, Salinas, CaliforniaDied Dec. 20, 1968, New York, N.Y.

John Steinbeck

Attended Stanford University intermittently between 1920 and 1926 – no degree

Early in his writing career supported himself as a manual laborer

Lived much of his life in Monterey County, California

John Steinbeck

Received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962

During World War II wrote government propaganda and served as war correspondent

After writing The Grapes of Wrath collected marine life in Mexico with freelance biologist Edward F. Ricketts. The two men

collaborated in writing a study of the fauna of the Gulf of California (Sea of Cortez)

John SteinbeckCup of Gold (1929)

The Pastures of Heaven (1932)

To a God Unknown (1933)

Tortilla Flat (1935)

In Dubious Battle (1936)

Of Mice and Men (1937)

First success

The Grapes of Wrath (1939) Won a Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and National Book Award

Story of a strike by agricultural laborers instigated by a pair of Marxist labor organizers

Story that ends tragically about the bond between two itinerant ranch hands, George and Lennie

The Grapes of WrathJoad family

Tenant farmers in Oklahoma evicted from their land

Travel to California looking for work and a better life

Find prejudice, oppressive labor practices, and poverty

The Grapes of WrathTenant farmers in Oklahoma

evicted from their land

“ You’ll have to get off the land. …Pa was born here, and he killed weeds and snakes. Then a bad year came and he had to borrow a little money. An’ we was born here. There in the door—our children born here. And Pa had to borrow money. The bank owned the land then, but we stayed and we got a little bit of what we raised. We know that—all that. It’s not us, it’s the bank. A bank isn’t like a man. Or an owner with fifty thousand acres, he isn’t like a man either. That’s the monster.”Grapes of Wrath, page 36

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Midwest

The Grapes of WrathTenant farmers in Oklahoma

evicted from their land

We need800

Workers!

The Grapes of WrathFind prejudice, oppressive

labor practices, and poverty

“You’ll see him [the person who sent out the hand bills] or somebody that’s workin’ for him. You’ll be a campin’ by a ditch, you an’ fifty other famblies. An’ he’ll come in. He’ll look in your tent an’ see if you get anything lef’ to eat. An’ if you got nothin’, he says, ‘Wanna job?’ An’ you’ll say, ‘I sure do, mister. I’ll sure thank you for a chance to do some work.’ An’ he’ll say, ‘I can use you.’ … Maybe he needs two hundered men, so he talks to five hundred, an’ they tell other folks, an’ when you get to the place, they’s a thousan’ men. This here fella says, ‘I’m payin twenty cents an hour.’ An’ maybe half a the men walk off. But they’s still five hundred that’s so goddam hungry they’ll work for nothin’ but biscuits … The more fellas he can get, an’ the hungrier, less he’s gonna pay.”Grapes of Wrath, pages 190-191

The Grapes of WrathTravel to California looking for

work and a better life

“But I like to think how nice it’s gonna be, maybe, in California. Never cold. An’ fruit ever’place, an’ people just bein’ in the nicest places, little white houses in among the orange trees. I wonder—that is, if we all get jobs an’ all work—maybe we can get one of them little white houses. An’ the little fellas go out an’ pick oranges right off the tree.”Ma JoadGrapes of Wrath, page 93

The Grapes of WrathFind prejudice, oppressive

labor practices, and poverty

“In their lapels the insignia of lodges and service clubs, places where they can go and, by a weight of numbers of little worried men, reassure themselves that business is noble and not the curious ritualized thievery they know it is…”Grapes of Wrath, page 156

The Grapes of WrathFirst view of California’s fertile fields

“They drove through Tehachapi in the morning glow, and the sun came up behind them, and then—suddenly they saw the great valley below them. Al jammed on the brake and stopped in the middle of the road, and ‘Jesus Christ! Look!’ he said. The vineyards, the orchards, the great flat valley, green and beautiful, the trees set in rows, and the farm houses.…Pa sighed, ‘I never knowed they was anything like her.’ The peach trees and the walnut groves, and the dark green patches of oranges. And red roofs among the trees, and barns—rich barns.”Grapes of Wrath, page 227

Hoovervilles

Kakaako Homeless Camps

The Grapes of Wrath – Response by Frank J. Taylor“The experiences of the Joad family … are not typical of those of the real migrants I found in the course of two reportorial tours of the agricultural

valleys.”

Survey by Farm Security Administration : Average migrant family had 2.8 children

“Actually, no migrant family hungers in California unless it is too proud to accept relief. Few migrants are.”

“When the harvest is on, the base wage for agricultural workers on California farms is $2.10 per day with board, as compared to $1.00 in Oklahoma, $1.35 in

Texas, and 65 cents in Arkansas. These figures are from the U.S. Bureau of Agricultural Economics.”

The Grapes of Wrath – Associated Farmer’s Response

1939 annual convention in Stockton

John Steinbeck denounced as arch-enemy, defamer, slanderer of migratory farm labor in California

Carey Mc Williams, lawyer who served as Commissioner of Immigration and Housing for the state of California and wrote books such as Factories in the Field and Ill Fares the Land, was referred to as Agricultural Pest No. 1 in California

The Grapes of Wrath – Oklahoma’s Response

Complaints about the “vile language”

“communistic propaganda”

The Grapes of Wrath sold very well in Oklahoma bookstores. “Most stores considered it their best seller, excepting only Gone with the Wind” (Martin Shockley)

“Of thirty libraries answering my letter of inquiry, only four, including one state college library, do not own at least one copy of the book, and the Tulsa Public Library owns twenty-eight copies.”

The Grapes of Wrath – Oklahoma’s Response

“A few libraries restricted circulation to ‘adults only.’ About half the libraries mentioned long waiting lists, Miss Sue Salmon of the Duncan Public Library reporting that ‘Even as late as the spring of 1940 we counted 75 people waiting.” (Martin Shockley)

“I have been asked quite often if I could not dig up some statistics capable of refuting the story of the Grapes of wrath … It cannot be done, for all the available data proved beyond doubt that the general impression given by Steinbeck’s book is substantially reliable.” (Professor O.B. Duncan, Head of the Department of Sociology at A. and M. College, as quoted by Martin Shockley)

John Steinbeck

Branded a communist

Won a Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and National Book Award

Received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962

The Grapes of Wrath

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