On vacation, I finally read The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. I’d been meaning to read the Grapes of Wrath for quite some time, but never got around it. Steinbeck is a spectacular writer. I can’t believe nobody made me read Steinbeck in high school. One day a couple of years ago, I read East of Eden and found it gripping, particularly for a book written 60 years ago.
Anyway, the house we were staying in had a copy of the book, so that’s what I read. Basically, it’s the story of the Joad family, forced off of their Oklahoma farm by debt along with thousands of other “Okies” and other midwestern farmers. They scrape together enough money to make the harrowing journey along Route 66 from Oklahoma to California in their beat up jalopy. They’re lured to California by flyers advertising a need for workers. Turns out it’s a scam by California property owners to drive down wages. If you have 5 starving men for every available job, you can essentially feed them bread for day’s work, and they’ll take it.
I’d love to know more about how California went from being a state where the few powerful owners ran the show, taking advantage of soul-crushing poverty to one of the more liberal states in the nation. I wonder if it’s like a Newtonian 3rd law of politics — the liberal state of today is an equal and opposite reaction to the state of the state in the 1930s? It also brought to light a downside of the mobility of the automobile. Whereas prior to the availability of cheap locomotion, Dust Bowl style poverty would have probably resulted in more care for the poor in their own states and/or violent insurrection simply because the poor were backed into a corner and their neighbors would be forced to deal with them; the availability of cheap cars created at least the illusion of an option. They hit the road searching for opportunity. When they got to California, they were separated from their roots, vulnerable to slave wage manipulation, and easy for established Californians to ignore and loathe because they were newcomers.
An abrupt and (to me) unsatisfactory ending, though. I’ll have to look at a Cliffs Notes analysis or something to see the important stuff that flew over my head. I’ll end this entry with Tom Joad’s speech:
“Well, maybe like Casy says, a fellow ain’t got a soul of his own, but only a piece of a big one… Then it don’t matter. Then I’ll be all around in the dark. I’ll be everywhere, wherever you look. Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. . . I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad an’—I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folks eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build—why, I’ll be there
