Jason's review of The Grapes of Wrath (original) (raw)

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Jason's Reviews > The Grapes of Wrath

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath
by

4426615

In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

This book really gets my goat. Those poor, dirty Joads. So poor and so, so dirty. After being displaced from their Oklahoma farm following the Dust Bowl storms that wreck their crops and cause them to default on their loans, the Joads find themselves a family of migrants in search of work and food. They join a stream of hundreds of thousands of other migrant families across the United States to what they believe to be the prosperous valleys of California. Only once they arrive, they discover that there is nothing prosperous about it—not only is there a serious shortage of work (mostly caused by an overabundance of labor that came with the influx of so many other migrant families), but they also have to contend with growing anti-migrant sentiment among the local population and wealthy landowners who think nothing of taking advantage of them in their state of vulnerability. Without proper labor laws protecting worker’s rights and no trade unions to represent their interests, the Joads are severely underpaid for whatever work they do manage to find, and they simply fall deeper and deeper into despondency.

The reason this gets my goat is ‘cause it doesn’t have to be that way. Yes, the Joads are uneducated and wouldn’t qualify for anything more than basic manual labor. Yes, it is the Great Depression and this is not an easy time to find a job even for skilled workers. And yes, they are a family of 47 and they probably look pretty ridiculous all crammed up in the back of their makeshift pickup truck. But gosh darn it, if only they had unions! If only they had fair labor standards to guarantee them a minimum wage! If only they had the protection of government legislation to prohibit wealthy landowners from colluding to keep prices high and wages low!

Which leads me to wonder… what would Ayn Rand think of all this? After all, aren’t labor unions and economic regulation precisely what she argues against? By that account, if Atlas Shrugged is the supposed Bible of right-wing thinkers, then I’d have to say that The Grapes of Wrath might just be its antithesis. But the real difference, as far as I can tell, is that while Atlas Shrugged represents a crazy woman’s vision of a whack job world that could never actually exist, John Steinbeck tells it like it is, and how it was, for so many hard working Americans who were taken advantage of under a system that did nothing to protect them. And what’s even more remarkable is that Steinbeck’s characters (whom, by the way, Rand would refer to as “moochers”—just thought we should be clear on that) make Dagny Taggart and Henry Reardon look like a couple of pussies. What is it Ma Joad says? That if you’re in trouble or hurt or need, to “go to poor people—for they’re the only ones that’ll help.”

This is a novel about the working poor, and it should serve to remind us what can go horribly wrong in an unregulated economy.

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Reading Progress

February 6, 2011 – Shelved

February 14, 2012 –40.0% "And this you can know—fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is the foundation of Manself, and this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe."

February 21, 2012 –60.0% "And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away."

February 25, 2012 –Finished Reading

September 2, 2012 – Shelved as:2012

September 2, 2012 – Shelved as:reviewed

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