The Grapes of Wrath is a strongly sustained social and political narrative that provides and accurate and faithful description of a critical period in American history. The novel is a post-depression novel and the writer John Steinbeck’s epic masterpiece of social consciousness in its picture of helpless people crushed by drought and depression. The novel is usually described as a novel of social protest, for it exposes the desperate conditions under which one group of American workers, the migratory farm families, was forced to live during 1930s.
In the depths of the greatest economic depression these people had to abandon their homes and their livelihoods. They were uprooted and set adrift because tractors were rapidly industrializing the Southern cotton fields and because erosion and drought were creating the Dust Bowl in wide areas of Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma. While many of the families moved only short distances, yet one hundred and fifty thousand moved to California, Steinbeck’s hometown, where their presence caused acute social stresses. The migrants were eager to obtain work but many landed properties took advantage of their poverty and distress, by hiring them at starvation wages and treating them with great brutality. They were denied even the most elementary human and civil rights. As part of the exploitation the land owners tried to suppress all attempts at organization by the migrant workers – who were contemptuously referred to as “Okies”. It was not until 1937, that they were able to form small groups for self-protection.
In the novel, Steinbeck has depicted the devastating impact of the great economic depression on the Joad family. The family is uprooted from its age old environs due to drought and dusty storms as well as due to the introduction of tractors and other mechanical means to be used for ploughing and harvesting in place of manual labour. Thousands of families of landless workers left Oklahoma to seek employment in California. But even there the treatment meted out to them is no better. They are at the best treated as the guinea pigs by their new ‘hosts’, who exploited them in every possible manner. They had been lured with the help of hand-bills to come to California saying that there was a lot of work at higher wages. But what they received was only exploitation by labour contractors and violence from the deputies, who acted at the behest of the rich landlords.
The Joads like others were forced to starve and remain out of work for long spells. Yet they did not lose courage and hope. They continued to persevere in the hope that someday they will be able to get a better deal. Thus, ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ is a story of perseverance, determination, sufferings and miseries, which was the destiny of not only of the Joad family but also of lakhs of their brethren.
Superficially, the novel seems to be a story of a contemporary problem. But it transcends the time-barrier in the resolution provided to the problem by the author. Steinbeck preaches the lesson of ‘togetherness’ in order to fight against the man-made sufferings. He believes that unless people come together and feel the sufferings cannot be mitigated.
The Joad family particularly Ma Joad, Tom Joad and Jim Casy are the representatives of this philosophy of Steinbeck. Ma has little food to feed her own family, but she shares her little with her fellow “have-nots”. When she learns of a cotton-picking job, she communicates that knowledge to the Wainwrights, with the result that the Joads actually earn less money. Tom, who had been and individualistic character in the earlier chapters of the novel also learns this lesson of ‘togetherness’, in order to fight afainst the man-made sufferings. Rose of Sharon on Ma Joad’s asking feeds a dying old man to save him.
It is this feeling of togetherness among the displaced people that keeps the bits of their lives together and they are able to fight against the repressing conditions prevailing there.
In the depths of the greatest economic depression these people had to abandon their homes and their livelihoods. They were uprooted and set adrift because tractors were rapidly industrializing the Southern cotton fields and because erosion and drought were creating the Dust Bowl in wide areas of Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma. While many of the families moved only short distances, yet one hundred and fifty thousand moved to California, Steinbeck’s hometown, where their presence caused acute social stresses. The migrants were eager to obtain work but many landed properties took advantage of their poverty and distress, by hiring them at starvation wages and treating them with great brutality. They were denied even the most elementary human and civil rights. As part of the exploitation the land owners tried to suppress all attempts at organization by the migrant workers – who were contemptuously referred to as “Okies”. It was not until 1937, that they were able to form small groups for self-protection.
In the novel, Steinbeck has depicted the devastating impact of the great economic depression on the Joad family. The family is uprooted from its age old environs due to drought and dusty storms as well as due to the introduction of tractors and other mechanical means to be used for ploughing and harvesting in place of manual labour. Thousands of families of landless workers left Oklahoma to seek employment in California. But even there the treatment meted out to them is no better. They are at the best treated as the guinea pigs by their new ‘hosts’, who exploited them in every possible manner. They had been lured with the help of hand-bills to come to California saying that there was a lot of work at higher wages. But what they received was only exploitation by labour contractors and violence from the deputies, who acted at the behest of the rich landlords.
The Joads like others were forced to starve and remain out of work for long spells. Yet they did not lose courage and hope. They continued to persevere in the hope that someday they will be able to get a better deal. Thus, ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ is a story of perseverance, determination, sufferings and miseries, which was the destiny of not only of the Joad family but also of lakhs of their brethren.
Superficially, the novel seems to be a story of a contemporary problem. But it transcends the time-barrier in the resolution provided to the problem by the author. Steinbeck preaches the lesson of ‘togetherness’ in order to fight against the man-made sufferings. He believes that unless people come together and feel the sufferings cannot be mitigated.
The Joad family particularly Ma Joad, Tom Joad and Jim Casy are the representatives of this philosophy of Steinbeck. Ma has little food to feed her own family, but she shares her little with her fellow “have-nots”. When she learns of a cotton-picking job, she communicates that knowledge to the Wainwrights, with the result that the Joads actually earn less money. Tom, who had been and individualistic character in the earlier chapters of the novel also learns this lesson of ‘togetherness’, in order to fight afainst the man-made sufferings. Rose of Sharon on Ma Joad’s asking feeds a dying old man to save him.
It is this feeling of togetherness among the displaced people that keeps the bits of their lives together and they are able to fight against the repressing conditions prevailing there.
No comments:
Post a Comment