D'Amico, 1
For my essay I intend to discuss whether or not John Steinbeck exaggerated historical facts in
his book, The Grapes of Wrath. Although The Grapes of Wrath is a novel and therefore fiction, it
has had such an impact on the American public that it is historical accuracy should be brought
into question.1 The secondary sources used in my paper will be used to give more credibility to
my argument. The first three books discussed are primarily cover The Grapes of Wrath, and the
last three are to do with the historical aspects of the Dust Bowl and the Okie migration.
Although the secondary sources used will be crucial to my paper, not all will be wholly devoted
to the topic I am researching as The Grapes of Wrath is a fictional book and therefore most
books will be analyzing for literary purposes rather than historical. Collectively, the literature
suggests that the migrants, the people in living in the Midwest, and the residents of California all
felt the Dust Bowl impact so acutely because at the core of "the Okie problem" the migrants that
were causing such cultural and economic upheaval were Americans like themselves.
The Wide World of John Steinbeck (1958) by Peter Lisca is a compilation of reviews of
the works of John Steinbeck. Lisca analyzes two opposing arguments: that Steinbeck
exaggerated historical facts in order to prove a melodramatic point about how the Okies lived in
California, and that Steinbeck sincerely proved accurately the dismal lives of how the Okies were
living in California.2 Lisca goes on to conclude that the reason Steinbeck wrote about the
injustice of the situations between the migrants of the West and the people of California is that
in a naturalistic point of view, all people are made up of the same things, that all people are
equal in the struggle of life we all face. This view challenges the reception the Okies received in
California as fellow human beings and fellow Americans. This book seems to be much more
empathetic to Steinbeck than many other literary reviews of the book perhaps because it was
first published in 1958, meaning that the author could have seen some of the historical events
Steinbeck wrote about first hand.
1
2
Peter Lisca, The Wide World of John Steinbeck (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1958), 148-149.
Ibid., 145.
D'Amico, 2
A Critical Response to John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (2000), edited by Barbara
A. Heavilin, is a compilation of essays that examines The Grapes of Wrath. The book attempts
to present differences in opinion on The Grapes of Wrath and how it is reviewed based on its two
parts, reviews before the 1990s and the reviews after. The power of a book like this is that the
views range so widely from essay to essay. In one essay an author might be looking critically at
Steinbeck's work as having little plot but a large message,3 as another essay will examine the
reaction the people of California had to the book.4 Steinbeck, as Louis Owens and Hector Torres
write in their essay, Dialogue Structure and Levels of Discourse in The Grapes of Wrath, was
attempting with his book to make the reader feel as though they participated in the great evens
of the Dust Bowl. Unlike Lisca's work, the essays are from many different authors and therefore
the conclusion is differing in that while Lisca concludes Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath
for more humanitarian issues, A Critical Response has widely varying conclusions per authors
some wholly unrelated to my topic.
Dust Bowl Migrants in the American Imagination (1997) by Charles J. Shindo is a look at
the Dust Bowl through popular media. He examines other secondary sources, pictures, as well
as books like The Grapes of Wrath. Shindo's conclusion is that the way that the popular media
portrayed the plight of the Okies was very superficial and did not address the bigger problems
that they and California had at the time.5 Shindo asserts that the entire cultural understandings
of the Dust Bowl migration and its effects on California cannot be accurately portrayed by texts
and images alone.6 However, the images in pop culture that Shindo inserts into his book are a
good visual representation of the inequality and desperate conditios the Western residents, the
migrants, and the residents of California lived in. This book differs from the other two literary
3
Barbara A. Heavilin, ed. The Critical Response to John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (Westport: Greenwood
Press, 2000), 121.
4
Ibid., 215.
5
Charles J. Shindo, Dust Bowl Migrants in the American Imagination (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997),
222.
6
Ibid., 222.
D'Amico, 3
analysis in that the conclusion and research is marginally different. Where Lisca and Heavilin
use essays to prove their point, Shindo uses pictures and excerpts of pop culture sensations of
the time.
Walter J. Stein's California and the Dust Bowl Migration (1973) is an extremely specific
monograph about the period of Okies migrating to California, what they found there, and how
the "Okie problem" wore on to be eventually resolved.7 Stein's book investigates the causes and
effects of the Dust Bowl migration to California as well as the push and pull factors that brought
the workers there and what they eventually found. Like the other books in this literature review,
Stein focuses on the Okie's and their problems in California but also how they effected other
people. For instance, the California state government and their distaste for relief camps for the
Western migrants. Like Lisca, Stein is very sympathetic to the Okies and their plight an trend
found in more of the older books than the more modern ones on the subject. The more modern
works seem to view the subject more objectively instead of entering into a humanitarian debate.
Bitter Harvest: a History of California Farmworkers, 1870-1941 (1981) by Cletus E.
Daniel is a book that describes the history of California with a sympathetic view for the workers.
Bitter Harvest follows the workhands from the shortages of labor in the 1870's, to the
discrimination against Orientals,8 to the seasonal Mexican workers, and then finally to the large
increase of Western migrant workers, making the worker problem in California not just an "Okie
Problem, but a complex structural deficiency.9 Daniel outlines the legal discrimination against
the Chinese in the late nineteenth century to the failure to organize the Mexican workers
through the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW),10 and then to the rapid influx of migrant
workers, the "Okie Problem." Bitter Harvest to the basest point, is about the unstable economy
of California when the farms switched from seasonal foreign workers to poor, permanent
7
Walter Stein, California and the Dust Bowl Migration (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1973), 279.
Cletus Daniel, Bitter Harvest: A History of California Farmworkers, 1870-1941 (Ithaca, The Cornell Press, 1981),
50-76.
9
Ibid., 283.
10
Ibid., 86.
8
D'Amico, 4
American refuges. As with Stein's monograph, this book is very empathetic to the workers
which is easily explainable seeing that he dedicates the book to his father who, "worked with his
hands."
James N. Gregory's American Exodus (1989), is a look at how western migration affected
more than just California's agriculture, but its society and culture as well.11 Gregory outlines the
reasons for the migrants' exodus and the life they found in California and his book points out
that the people migrating to California were not limited to just agricultural families. There were
a vast number of non-agricultural families immigrating from further places than the mid-west
and for other reasons than just The Dust Bowl.12 Oklahomans posed an odd problem for the
residents of California-- that they were too Anglo-Saxon, born and bred Americans.13 Gregory's
monograph is primarily about migration and its effect on society, this way American Exodus
relates to Daniel's book just that it is a broad overview of reactions to the Okies, not just the
plight of the work force.
The books chosen for my essay all have in common that they follow the impact and the
hardships of all the people involved in the Dust Bowl. As with Lisca, Heavilin, and Shindo, some
of my books are selected specifically to do with either the literary aspect of this paper and the
main work being analyzed, The Grapes of Wrath. With Stein, Daniel and Stein, some books are
chosen specifically for historical purposes. As The Grapes of Wrath is already very influential to
the way that American society views The Dust Bowl, the two subjects, literature and History
overlap which is found in most of these works.
11
James Gregory, American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California (New York, Oxford
University press, 1989), 222.
12
Ibid., 18.
13
Ibid., 79.