The Grapes of Wrath
by
John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck
Born Feb. 27, 1902, Salinas, California
Died 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
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)
During World War II wrote government propaganda and served as
war correspondent
Received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962
John Steinbeck
Cup of Gold (1929)
The Pastures of Heaven (1932)
To a God Unknown (1933)
Tortilla Flat (1935)
First success
In Dubious Battle (1936)
Story of a strike by agricultural laborers instigated by a
pair of Marxist labor organizers
Of Mice and Men (1937)
Story that ends tragically about the bond between two
itinerant ranch hands, George and Lennie
The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
Won a Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and National Book Award
The Grapes of Wrath
Joad 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 Wrath
Tenant 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
st
21
Century Evictions
2012 Eviction Notice
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The Grapes of Wrath
Tenant farmers in Oklahoma
evicted from their land
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800
Workers!
Midwest
The Grapes of Wrath
Find 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 Wrath
Travel 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 Joad
Grapes of Wrath, page 93
The Grapes of Wrath
Find 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 Wrath
First 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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