Book Review / "The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


My son came over to me when I was writing this review and, peering over my shoulder, asked: “2K words in a review? Really, Mom?”

I replied that this book deserves it, for it is one of the greatest books I have ever read. Probably the greatest.

“The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck, a Pulitzer Prize award winner, the book that laid not a brick but a whole foundation for the author to receive the Nobel prize in literature, doesn’t need any additional acclaim. Not from a random reader like me, anyway. And still, I want to share the absolute admiration and awe I haven’t felt for a very long time while reading a book.

I’ve been reading books for almost forty years, with children's books being my focus for a few years after I’d learned to read and told my parents to stop reading to me and leave me tete-a-tete with a book instead. Steadily going through my father’s extensive library – and what an eclectic collection of literature it is, I must tell you! – I’d read a lot of books written by the world classics before I was twenty. Some exploded like a mine, their pieces having left marks on me, shaping me into who I am. While others rushed by like blazing stars, lighting up my imagination while reading and disappearing without a trace after I turned the last page. Some I reread as an adult and while some made an even deeper impression on me, others left me wondering what depth I’d seen in them where now I could see all the way to the bottom. Some books I couldn’t finish when rereading, for they tore me apart, opening the emotional wounds decades of life experience have awarded me with.

I’ve read “The Grapes of Wrath” now for the first time. While there were Hemingway and Faulkner in my father’s library, Steinbeck wasn’t on its shelves. And, to be honest, I’m glad I got to read this book when I could truly appreciate it.

“Up ahead they’s a thousand’ lives we might live, but when it comes, it’ll on’y be one.”

Back in the 1930s, during the Great Depression, the population of the United States was over one hundred and twenty million. The Joads, though, were among those two hundred fifty thousand farmers who, after the banks had thrown them out from their land and homes, set out to California, where, they were told, they could start over. They could have lived a different life, there probably were, if not thousands, but a few other choices they could have made, but the only one they lived was full of hardships and sorrow.

“The Grapes of Wrath” – or any book really – isn’t a story about everyone. It isn’t about the fate of every single American family who lived in the States almost a century ago. It isn’t about every farmer of Oklahoma or other agricultural state, who, driven by the wish to feed their families during the years when the harvest was poor and by the lack of financial literacy, lost their farm. It also isn’t about every single Californian farmer who was luckier and still had rich harvests and got an extra bonus of cheap labour force flooding the country.

Yet, “The Grapes of Wrath” is a story of thousands – tens or hundreds – of people. And as such, it deserves to be told. From the perspective of these people, their hardships, the sufferings they had to go through. Without sugarcoating or diminishing the bitterness of what they experienced solely for the sake of not offending anyone.

Every story deserves to be told, even if it angers someone.

The truth is that those who go through something like the Joads do in “The Grapes of Wrath” seldom get a chance to tell their story. Others have to do it. But for that, those luckier ones have to have compassion for the less fortunate and a desire to understand how it felt what they’d never experienced. It is absolutely impossible to do with the attitude ‘If it didn’t happen to me, it didn’t happen at all.’

History repeats itself. Not literally but in general terms. At any given time, there are ‘those goddamn Okies’; only the title changes, but the meaning remains. “Them goddamn Okies got no sense and no feeling. They ain’t human. A human being wouldn’t live like they do. A human being couldn’t stand it to be so dirty and miserable.” Replace ‘Okies’ with any other derogatory name a group, a nation, etc. was labelled with throughout centuries, and we see the same picture. More fortunate look down at those less so and see them through the ‘it’s their own fault’ prism. This is partly due to the ever-active self-preservation instinct without which human beings wouldn’t have evolved as far as we did. Still, the answer Steinbeck offers stings. “For the quality of owning freezes you forever into “I”, and cuts you off forever from the “we”.” It is an unpopular point of view, for we all strive for prosperity and it is normal and right. Yet, does it have to always go together with growing indifferent towards those in need? And does money alone guarantee happiness? Steinbeck answers through former preacher Jim Casy: “If he needs a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to me he needs it ‘cause he feels awful poor inside hisself, and if he’s poor in hisself, there ain’t no million acres gonna make him feel rich.” It doesn’t mean that every rich person automatically turns into a monster, and every poor one is a saint. As I see it, it is about balance. The most natural, but at the same time, one of the hard-attained things in the world.

The immense power of this book hit me hard. I travelled with the Joads in their old jalopy of a truck they bought, having spent a painful chunk of the little money they managed to scrape selling all their life. I felt their fears and their pain. I was terrified every time they encountered hate, aggression, and indifference on their way to California – to the land where, they believed, they’ll have a chance to become people again. Not ‘those goddamn Okies’; not the useless customers who fill up the tank for a few dollars – not enough to make the gas station’s owner rich – and use the water, drinking it right from the hose and using it to wash the road dust and dirt, which seem to have grown into their skin. Not the annoying clients who walk into a roadside diner and – unlike truck drivers, the worthy customers! – can’t even buy a couple of candies for their equally filthy and miserable kids.

Together with the Joads, I slept on the ground in the makeshift tent – tarpaulin spread over a rope – and I dreamt about the green and lush lands of California. Countless times, I lost hope and felt it blossoming anew upon meeting kind people who didn’t look at me like I’m not a human being.
For me, from fictional characters the Joads have transformed into real people.

Ma Joad, the core of the family, its heart and the engine that never stops. Her inner strength is immense, but it isn’t enough not to let everyone under her care give up. And every time someone does give up, a part of her soul dies. She is fierce and patient, kind and unrelenting. A woman, a wife, a mother – the rock.

Pa Joad. A man who was driven out of his land. The land that, for him, was his life. And still, he goes on. Is it because of his wife Ma Joad? Or because the responsibility for his family outweighs his grief?

Tom Joad. Someone who did the wrong thing but didn’t turn wrong.

Rose of Sharon. A mother-to-be, robbed of the most beautiful time in life of every woman. Instead of thinking about the baby names, forced to spend this magic time dragging through the desert under the tarpaulin, not knowing where she’ll have to give birth to the miracle she is carrying under her heart.

Granma and Grampa. Both so familiar and real that my heart aches to write about them.

Ruthie and Winfield. Not little kids, but not grown-ups either. Did they realise what their family was going through or, for them, it was a road trip filled with excitement and adventure. I was trying to imagine how they felt and remembered an episode from my life when my mom reminisced on the past – which she, as not a dreamer, with her feet always firmly on the ground, did extremely seldom. “It’s funny that we never felt hungry,” she said, looking uncharacteristically subdued. “Your aunt managed to cook a diverse menu from only five products at her disposal.”

“I’m learnin’ one thing good,” – says Ma Joad in the book. “Learnin’ it all a time, ever’ day. If you’re in trouble or hurt or need – go to poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help – the only ones.” And this is true, simply because among those in need, you are less likely to be viewed as a ‘goddamn Okie’; those who’re suffering themselves, know only too well that life is not always a straight line with all obstacles clearly visible until the very horizon.

“Ever’thing we do – seems to me is aimed right at going’ on. Seems that way to me. Even gettin’ hungry – even bein’ sick; some die, but the rest is tougher. Jus’ try to live the day, jus’ the day.” And this is the ultimate – can’t call it wisdom – the bottom line so to speak of what we can learn about life. Moving forward, go on no matter what – is everything we can do, the only thing we have some control over. Also, we can try to remain human. And not following anything blindly, be it an instinct or a prejudice ingrained in us by our upbringing, is the most important trait of a human being.

Steinbeck’s masterpiece made me remember that I’ve been on both sides of the barricades. I know how it feels to be treated as a ‘goddamn Okie’, and I also know how enraged people become if you aren’t ‘packing your stuff and heading to California.’ They hate you either way. But only those who live their lives driven by stereotypes and instincts.

Reading the Joads’ story – which shattered my heart into a million pieces – made me remember what my aunt said once to a ‘man in a shiny Cadillac’ who treated her like a ‘goddamn Okie.’ She told him – and he was a young man – when he refused to treat her in a decent way that she’d already been in his shoes and it is he who will one day step into hers. Many years later, her words proved to be true. I don’t know anything about this young man’s life, but I stumbled upon the article telling the story that resembled the kind of retaliation inflicted upon those who might have behaved in a similar way towards people like my aunt.

“The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck doesn’t follow any ‘standards’ modern authors – like myself – struggle with every day during our writing journey. It doesn’t grab you from the very first sentence. It settles into the story gradually. There are chapters throughout the book seemingly unconnected to the main plot – but they are integral to the story. It is extremely detailed, making you feel like you are a participant rather than a reader. And it all, following some inexplicable rules, which probably are the essence of creativity, weaves into one perfect whole.

If books need to be somehow classified and a common denominator should be chosen, I’d say: “Write the last paragraph so it punches the reader right into their gut.” The last paragraph of “The Grapes of Wrath” did that to me. And it will stay with me until neural connections in my brain stop working and my memory fails.





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John Steinbeck