Critical Essay on Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath

Introduction

The book, written by John Steinbeck portrays life in the times of the dust bowl and great depression. The book follows the Oklahoma tenant farmers family as they traveled to the west side of California, under gruesome and dark circumstances. Some of the themes seen in this story are; the greed of the banks, strength, transition, and altruism. Those who were migrating, in this story, knew that they needed to assist each other for them to survive. Steinbeck shows how altruism can help in keeping a person going at a time of need. In the book, there is a transition of characters, societies, and generations. Some of the changes seen are; a transition towards industrialization and between self and community.

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The Transition Towards Industrialization

This book is mostly a road book when tracing the family of Joad from Oklahoma along route 66, Steinbeck was able to get a hold of the ethos of an era that was characterized by migration and industrialization. The movement was made necessary by the manufacturing of factories and farms and made apparent opportunities at the end of the road for a better life. In chapter six paragraph 72, Casy says "Fella gets used to a place, it's hard to go, Fella gets used to a way of thinking, it's hard to leave." The portraits of a great depression and dust bowl are indelible, revealing and concealing. In Steinbeck's book, he was able to "define the experience of the great depression" for his coming generations (Steinbeck, p120). By creating the highway landscape, Steinbeck illustrated the struggle the people faced between oppression and opportunity and described a tension which existed between the need to stay focused on the values that existed at home and the need to be an automobile. The migrant landscape is a symbol of those who lived in the world centered on community and dislocation.

The grape of Wrath gives us a window towards the change of culture in America. The car salesman says" Mules! Hey Joe, hear this? The guy wants to trade mules. Didn't anybody tell you this is a machine age? They don't use mules for nothing but glue no more (Steinbeck, p125)." The landowners know about the latest advancements in technology and are caught up in scientific America while the tenant farmers are still stuck in their traditional ways. The book still resonates with most readers today on how the America character in the face of adversity is told. The road that Steinbeck chose as his setting reveals an appreciation of social mobility and geography in defining the trait of America.

In the book, a need to improve techniques used in farming became important when the drought made cultivation of crops difficult. The economy affected the farmers and forced them to foreclose on land that was not profitable. According to Steinbeck, industrialization is like a sexual desire. He says "behind the plows, the long seeders-twelve curved iron penes erected in the shop, orgasms set by gears, raping methodically, raping without passion. The driver sat in his iron seat, and he was proud of the straight lines he did not will, proud of the tractor he did not own or love, proud of the power he could not control. And when that crop grew and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sit past his fingertips (Steinbeck, p36)." The farmers viewed modernization as destruction to their romantic attachment to their land, and their way of life. Even when Joads moved to California, they noticed that only a few people were able to own property and a few farmers got displaced to being immigrants who only expected work.

In both of these cases, the new owners had no connection to the land, and they only regarded it in plunder and paper, while the American romantic figure was a hardworking noble farmer. This industrial revolution, as people migrated from farms to the cities, shook the structures of American life.

The Transition Between Self and Community

In the traditional humans' family, there is a necessary transition between a person and the community. In the early 19th century, there was a major shift in the family's role where they needed to protect themselves against the hostile world rather than having a link with it. The drought that happened in the great depression and dust wall forced many people to embrace their kinship and look past the traditional family. In chapter ten paragraph 114, it says "and then all of a sudden, the family began to function. Pa got up and lighted another lantern. Noah from a box in the kitchen brought out the bow-bladed butchering knife and whetted it on a worn little carborundum stone. And he laid the scraper on the chopping block, and the knife beside it. Pa brought two sturdy sticks, each three feet long, and pointed the ends with the ax, and he tied strong ropes, double half-hitched, to the middle of the sticks."

The migrant people stay together in camp, and due to the necessary proximity, there is a breaking of hindrances of relationships formation of small societies with a few expectations and rules. In chapter 17 paragraph two "in the evening, a strange thing happened; twenty families became one family; the children were the children of all. The loss of home became one loss and the golden time in the West one dream." The families are not trying to compete with each other. Everyone reaches out to connect with the other, with no family wanting to go through the whole process alone. No one wants to be independent or self-centered and need everyone else to make it.

The families become one and try to protect a new bond that they form the laws and values. Chapter seventeen paragraphs 3 says "at first, the families were timid in the building and tumbling worlds, but gradually the technique of building worlds became their technique. Then leaders emerged, then laws were made, then codes came into being. And as the words moved westwards, they were more complete and better furnished, for the builders were more experienced building them. In the last chapter of the book, there is still a family that has stuck together in the harsh circumstances. The little boy in the barn says "he wasn't hungry or he just ate. Give me the food; now he is too weak. Can hardly move." The father who is starving reminds us of the selflessness and the sense of community that was previously associated with the idea of a family by his son not leaving his side.

During one of the Hoovervilles, the family of Joads experiences a confrontation with a police officer, where a woman is shot, and Jim Casey is arrested and removed from both the society and the family. Through Casey's experience with other inmates in prison, he realizes the power of organized protests. The Joads are scared due to their losses in the Hoovervilles drive, that there are more others in the same situation. The Joads are lucky to find a place in the Weed patch camp, a palace of advanced culture and unity where people are held as equals.

The Joad clan, through the pressure of migration and dispossession, disintegrate. Ma Joad comes out as a cohesive, central force, "she walked for the family and held her head straight for the family," and the Joads explain the survival of a person to depend on the cooperation of the community. The family shifts to a matriarchal structure, from the patriarchal one. Jim Casey is often distorting the idea of viewing Ma Joad critically. The preacher's pronouncements do not lead to emerging of her mutual feelings independently.

Conclusion

The challenges faced by the farmers in the book and Joads are both emotional and economical. In the hope of a better life in California, the family is leaving everything behind of both sentimental and economic value. The trip towards transition requires a lot of sacrifices even if growth in California is all that Joads imagined. Also if family members could still create a new life for themselves, there was a huge part of themselves left in Oklahoma land.

Works Cited

Steinbeck, John. The grapes of wrath. Penguin, 2006.