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TechnoratiThe Ghosts of Tom Joad
After storms ravaged Iowa last summer, devastation wasn't the only thing that people found amid the flood waters. Scores of out-of-work electricians from Michigan, hard hit by auto industry cutbacks, spied opportunity.
Trekking hundreds of miles from home, where the unemployment rate of 8.5 percent is the highest in the United States, they were eager to scoop up jobs rewiring Cedar Rapids -- even if it meant sleeping in a tent for weeks on end.
To some observers, the desperate scene evoked an unmistakable image. "The Joads leaving Oklahoma is exactly what we are seeing coming out of Detroit now," said Harley Shaiken, a labor expert at the University of California, Berkeley.
Nearly 70 years after it was published, John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" -- which tells of the dirt-poor Joad family's epic migration from drought-plagued Oklahoma to fruitful (if unfriendly) Central California -- continues to resonate as few novels have. In fact, the book may well be more relevant today than at any time since it first appeared in April 1939.
"The Grapes of Wrath" always has been extraordinarily popular. More than 400,000 copies flew off the shelves its first year in print, making it the nation's No. 1 seller. So powerful was Steinbeck's portrayal of the Joads' plight that people began referring to the fictional clan as if it were real. "Meet the Joad Family," read one newspaper headline. "What's Being Done About the Joads?" asked another. "The Joads on Strike," declared a third.
Before long, thanks in part to Henry Fonda's performance as Tom Joad on the big screen and Woody Guthrie crooning about the Joads in his "Dust Bowl Ballads," Steinbeck's characters had become permanently etched into popular culture. When Bruce Springsteen and Rage Against the Machine sang about "The Ghost of Tom Joad," legions of fans already were tuned in to the generations-old reference.
Indeed, wherever people exhibit tremendous strength amid terrible anguish, the Joads are a potent symbol. "I suspect I met a few Ma Joads and Tom Joads in Kabul," said Afghanistan-born author Khaled Hosseini as he described the process that led him to write "The Kite Runner."
Yet these days, especially, it's more than just the Joads' strength in the face of adversity that makes "The Grapes of Wrath" so pertinent -- and poignant. Steinbeck's story echoes particularly loudly because, just as in 1939, the deficiencies of an unfettered free market are so plainly on display.
Only a fool, of course, would suggest that America is in anywhere near as bad shape now as it was then. The U.S. jobless rate stood above 17 percent in 1939, and personal income and total economic output were no higher than they had been a decade before, at the start of the Great Depression. Misery was ubiquitous.
Nor is anybody seriously hinting at the kind of radical solution that some of the country's leading intellects were openly advocating in the 1930s: a scuttling of the capitalist system in favor of some form of socialism. "There is little question in my mind that the principle of private ownership as a means of production is not long with us," Steinbeck himself proclaimed -- the kind of thinking that led officials in Kern County (the very place the Joads settled in the novel) to ban "The Grapes of Wrath" from libraries and schools until 1941.
Nonetheless, there are some striking parallels between the Joads' era and ours. Most notably, income inequality today is at its highest level since the late 1920s. Adjusted for inflation, median household income was actually lower last year than in 2000. Hunger is on the rise. Fueling a considerable amount of hardship is the mortgage industry crisis -- an episode that brings to mind Steinbeck's depiction of banks as rapacious monsters.
As in the 1930s, the issue is what to do about all this. In "The Grapes of Wrath," Steinbeck pointed to government intervention as an important piece of the answer; it was in a New Deal labor camp that the Joads found a needed measure of comfort and support.
Much of the New Deal -- both in substance and in spirit -- has long since been dismantled. But the notion that "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem," as Ronald Reagan so memorably put it, may also be running its course.
For many, polls show, it's becoming increasingly clear that the public sector has a role -- and a responsibility -- to help lift up those who are being left behind, as well as to more tightly regulate the corporations that, if left unchecked, can inflict so much damage throughout the economy. Even the Bush administration has warmed up to the notion of more vigorous oversight of business.
After he read "The Grapes of Wrath," President Franklin Delano Roosevelt remarked that "there are 500,000 Americans that live in the covers of that book." They may not exactly live there anymore, but millions can surely relate to the uneasy question that lies at the heart of Steinbeck's classic: How come so many are mired in poverty in a country blessed with so much prosperity?
9 Comments so far
Show AllI have read most of Steinbeck's work, most while still a boy of 14. Grapes of Wrath was his 'war and peace.'
Another relevant book 'Tortilla Flats' might illuminate a lot of border thugs.
Yeah, that's what always baffles me with 90% of US authors, even most "progressives": They are able to see the results of their economic system, they are capable to describing them, then they still manage to do the half-right analysis, but then at they end they invariably hasten to add that god forbid, of course they are no socialists and OF COURSE they couldn't dream of thinking of another economic system!!!
Actually boasting of how brainwashed one is, that's interesting.
Let's go to the remaining 10%: Steinbeck was a socialist.
And someone like Howard Zinn still is.
And of course a lot of people around the world are.
There are two ways of surviving the crash of a society. One is working as a community where everyones best interests are important. My folks did this on the prairies during the depression. People with next to nothing shared what little they had with people who had less then them .
My mother tells the story of sitting at a table, her mouth watering at the smell of my Grandmother slicing up bacon and bread to give to a family of gypsies that had wandered through in the wagon and my grandmother saying "I know you are hungry but they need it worse then we do".
The other is to arm oneself to the teeth and TAKE.
Your mother's story reminds me of my grandmother's story of having fed gypsies who passed through her neighborhood and in their gratitude the wanderers placed a very inconspicuous mark on her fence to let other gypsies know that these people were special and should not be taken from in the event they were not home when gypsies came to call.
Unlike some of her neighbors who occasionally had things taken from their yards or homes, my grandmother's property never suffered such for as long as she lived there. She also got a lot of chore work done by willing hands who really were willing to work for food.
Poet
There are so many stories like that. There is often honor among ordinary people. It happens coincidentally that two of my friend's fathers owned little stores in African-American neighborhoods, one in the Bronx and one in Philly starting in the 1950's. The owners were respectful and helpful toward their customers. They could see when someone needed credit. One always gave candy and made a fuss over kids who accomplished things in school, I forget the exact criteria. During the riots neighborhood people came out on the streets to make sure those stores were protected and not smashed or burned.
Joe
Dafoe
I lived near Joads part of the world in 1970, a WW had intervened, people had entered space but not there, the stay behinds were of three parts, the ones with money who bought land for peanuts, the ones who stayed behind and the black folk with no choice, It was an eye opener. Perhaps it was too soon after the dust bowl but ignorance of things beyond the horizon was the norm the civil rights movement had met the immovable object. Its vices far outweighed its virtues. Blind stupid patriotism was the rule. I think those stay behinds have multiplied like rabbits and taken their disease with them.
Sioux Rose
I have a male friend who lives the JOAD lifestyle. He is utterly convinced the US economy is about to come crashing down, and determined to get a head start. He is someone who taught "survival" weekends, "How to Become an Outdoor Woman" and such in Delaware years ago, and has an uncanny connection to nature. He sleeps in his tent outside whatever home he's involved in remodeling. He showers with a hose, and on colder days, heats the water in an outside stove.
I met another fellow in the Florida Keys where rent was so high that he worked all night as a taxi driver, and then slept at the town pool during the day. He could also get a shower there.
I understand more people are opting for live-aboard houseboats, although many towns have banned them. As times get tough, people get innovative or starve.
When people give up hope, accept things as they are and adapt to the worst case scenario then this is what surrender looks like.
This is not what Tom Joad stood for. He struggled, organized the migrant workers and fought the powers that be. The Grapes of Wrath was not a writ of surrender. It was, rather, the reverse. The struggle never ends.
Turning a blind eye has become an art and to some, a badge of honor. As a country, we have become a sanctuary for the deluded.