A review by wolfdan9
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

5.0

The Grapes of Wrath is a piece of historical fiction that centers around Tom Joad, a former convict with somewhat justifiable circumstances for his murdering of a belligerent, as he helps his family trek to California during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and survive there amid class struggle, lack of opportunity, police brutality, etc. The novel is quite political (with a surprising amount of relevance to some issues that the United States is still contending with in some ways) and Steinbeck is overtly left-leaning -- unsurprising for a literary writer -- but rather convincing while conveying both the facts of the horrible Dust Bowl, its associated social effects (which is Steinbeck's focus), and his perspective on how our people can move past it. At its heart, Grapes of Wrath is a family novel. Nearly all of the story is spent following the Joad family as they make their way uncertainly from Oklahoma to California in an unreliable truck housing all of their belongings and a meager amount of cash. Along the way, they meet others who share their stories and represent different groups of people whose lives the Dust Bowl destroyed (like a gas station owner whose funds are running out, fellow homeless farmers too afraid to head west, and a one-eyed mechanic betrayed and consequently disloyal to his boss). All of the side characters, and the meetings that the Joads have with them, demonstrate the truly devastating effects of the Dust Bowl and how it impacted Midwesterners during the 1930s. Steinbeck captures the fear, hopelessness, and uncertainty of ordinary people, and most importantly, their resilience. We see in many victims the same sentiment of persevering simply because there is no other choice. Steinbeck's view is that the human condition is to adapt and carry on despite impossibility. He is especially clear in his advocacy for sticking together in the face of adversity; that the true evil of the Dust Bowl, which is the opportunity it created for corporations and other institutions (e.g., the police) to seize control over folks during a desperate time of weakness can only be conquered by the will of a united people. This is not only a common theme throughout the novel (and ubiquitously symbolized by the Joad family as a unit and their encounters with kind strangers), but is quite clearly pointed out by Steinbeck throughout his "interlude" chapters. Basically, the novel is broken up into 30 chapters, about half of which follow the story of the Joad family (nonetheless, these 15 or so chapters compose about 80% of the actual volume of pages), while the alternating 15 are vignettes about other Americans affected or Steinbeck's perspective on what had happened. He is surprisingly personal in his denunciation of corporate America's response to the Dust Bowl, which is also embedded within the narrative as an underlying theme, but is so clearly (and critically) written from his own perspective too: "There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success.... children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange." And so on. The story is brimming with this sentiment of aghast. Steinbeck ends the novel brilliantly. After Rose of Sharon (the daughter) gives birth to a stillborn child, a deadly storm impacts the boxcar camp that the Joad family is staying at. She and her parents escape to a dingy barn, where there is a man dying of hunger. At the very end, she breastfeeds the man with a sense of satisfaction. This beautifully and succinctly shows the effort required by a community of people to overcome the tyrannical power of large institutions. It takes this degree of familial love and trust with strangers -- not to mention the initiative to form those connections of deep trust -- in order to help one's fellow man survive. Rose of Sharon, despite losing many family members, her husband, and her child, feels completed by her usefulness in this final scene because she is fulfilling her purpose (as I interpret it) as a human being.