Volume 7 , Issue 6

Grapes of Wrath & Okies

Since the talk of "Okie's," we have been browsing the web to refresh our memories of John Steinbeck's book (Grapes of Wrath) that was first published in the United States of America by the Viking Penguin, Inc., 1939. Steinbeck's idea for the book came to him on his first journalistic assignment in the Fall of 1936.

A liberal San Francisco Newspaper sent Steinbeck to cover the migrant situation in California. He went to the Arvin Encampment in Bakersfield, California to talk to Tom Collins, manager of one of the first of the government camps set up in California to alleviate housing problems for the Southwest migrants pouring into the state from the Dust Bowl regions.

Steinbeck interviewed Collins and the migrants. Steinbeck studied the situation first hand, after which he wrote a series of articles on the migrants' plight, published as "The Harvest Gypsies ." By December 1936 Steinbeck knew that his next "big book" would be the migrants' story.

The Grapes of Wrath is said to be Steinbeck's masterpiece. It was a portrait of "Dust Bowl" poverty -- an historical tract about homelessness in the 1930s -- the story of the migration of a people forced from their land for drought, economical conditions. The story begins as a conflict between man and nature, but soon the conflict is between man and man. The ecological disaster that had transformed Oklahoma into the "dust bowl" is only part of the tragedy, though.

When the migrants arrived in the blooming abundance of California, they were kept from the bounty of the land. The devastation of the land was as serious as the economic disaster of the stock market crash. Those tenant farm workers that worked the lands were finding themselves forced from the very land that they toiled, sacrificed their blood, sweat, tears, dreams and hopes in all those years.

They packed their families, belongings into their automobiles with hopes, dreams of finding jobs and a renewed dignity in California. All because of an ad in a "flyer" from California that promised jobs for migrant farm workers. Only to find out that the promise of jobs was fraudulent. It was a story of a family unit disintegrating -- of how power shifts from patriarchy to matriarchy -- Equally important is the relationship between Ma Joad and her self-absorbed daughter, Rose of Sharon. Like Tom, she must learn to look beyond herself and her needs to embrace the needs of others. The novel is thus a plea for empathy and understanding, as well as an indictment of a system that left so many destitute in a land where excess oranges were dumped in rivers in order to keep prices inflated.

There was a practice of passing on the blame for the misery that was occuring during the depression. The farmers had no one against whom to protest, for they find only figureheads dispossessing them, each a representative of a system against which all were powerless. All the people in the story are caught in the grip of forces larger than themselves and beyond their control. There is no traceable human will behind the evictions, merely an inhuman monster created by big business, and characterized by a dehumanizing greed and opportunism. The system plants cotton, knowing that it will devastate the land; the system uses tractors, knowing that they will dispossess the farmers. It is a time when men had created the monster, but could not control it. The farmers gave their blood to keep, work with the land, only for some to be driven from it in search of a renewed dignity and hope for a better life.

It has been brought to our attention that our grandparents, great-grandparents remained behind. Some may have even benefited to some extent from the drought, depression of the '20s and '30s. So... Do we really qualify ourselves being called "Okie" when our ancestors remained on, with the land? Whatever the case, does it really matter? Aren't we all in this together?

What's in a name or label anyway? Why not learn from the past so we are not condemned to repeat it! We would love to share and pay tribute to some of those families drought, depression stories of the '20s and '30s. If you know of anyone, please give them our Email address. Thanks!   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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