The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck – The Long Story of Migration
The Grapes of Wrath is John Steinbeck’s novel about people displaced by economic and environmental collapse in the central United States during the 1930s. The book alternates chapters that describe the disaster as a whole, with chapters focusing on the struggles of a particular Oklahoma farming family. Driven off their land by drought and bank foreclosure, the Joads sell everything they can’t take with them, buy a car and make a hazardous journey to California, where they hope to find work, money and security.
The Grapes of Wrath has become a standard entry on best book lists, and a feature of American school syllabuses. Perhaps this is partly because Steinbeck wrote such a definitive story, echoing what storytelling was originally all about. In 1949, ten years after The Grapes of Wrath appeared, Joseph Campbell published The Hero With a Thousand Faces, presenting the history of storytelling as a kind of training for people who are about to face challenges. And a basic challenge in life is the process of leaving home and setting out on a journey into the big, wide world.
The Grapes of Wrath is a farming family Exodus, which closely follows an ancient pattern of stories about people leaving their home and heading towards a promised, and dangerous, land. There is a very interesting twist with this particular Exodus, however, and that lies with the character of Ma Joad. In a Joseph Campbell scenario, the typical hero is a young man. But as the Joads travel across America and then struggle to survive in California, it is Ma who holds the family together, organising everything and encouraging everyone on. Ma emerges as the leader, Pa becoming peripheral by contrast. I found it fascinating that someone who would not ordinarily have left home, who is the embodiment of home in many ways, becomes the person who stands up best to the perils of the journey. Ma really shows the complexity and subtlety of The Grapes of Wrath where home is not a fixed place, but a state of mind that goes with people on their journey.
The Grapes of Wrath is a universal story, expressed through a particular situation, brought to life with meticulous research. A deserved classic, relevant in times of upheaval when people are displaced and on the move, which is pretty much all the time
