The Grapes of Wrath

by John Steinbeck

The immersion experience was invaluable, and the importance of journalism in Steinbeck’s development cannot be underestimated, as William Howarth claims in Wyatt’s New Essays. Written mostly in a measured style to promote understanding and intelligent solutions, Steinbeck’s articles are full of case studies, chilling factual statistics, and an unsettling catalogue of human woes (illness, incapacitation, persecution, death) observed from close contact with field workers he had met. In the spirit of advocacy journalism, Steinbeck concluded with prophetic recommendations for alleviating the conflict with federal aid and local support; this in turn would create subsistence farms, establish a migratory labor board, encourage unionization, and punish terrorism. When they were published in 1936 (and again when they were reprinted verbatim in 1938 as Their Blood Is Strong, a pamphlet by the nonprofit Simon J. Lubin Society that sold ten thousand copies at twenty-five cents each), Steinbeck’s articles solidified his credibility—both in and out of migrant camps—as a serious commentator in a league with Dorothea Lange’s husband, Paul Taylor, and Carey McWilliams, two other influential and respected investigators.