Happy Birthday, John Steinbeck!
Cover of Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath
Happy birthday to one of my favorite writers, John Steinbeck. Grapes of Wrath is one of my favorites. I remember staying up all night reading this book. Steinbeck was not a capitalist by any means but what impressed me was his detailed account of poverty during the Depression and the hardships of a group of families traveling through the Dust Bowl looking for work. There were no social safety nets back in the 1930s and these folks survived by pure grit and hard work. They accepted back breaking work where ever it could be found and counted themselves fortunate to have jobs. The cohesiveness of the family units were also stabilizing factors. Steinbeck showed, through the characters' work ethic and resilience, that there is no indignity in poverty. I think that this book was actually Steinbeck's attempt to criticize capitalism but the message I took from this book is that there is honor in all work and the importance of a strong family support system to ensure the survival of the children and the family unit. This book also honed my compassion and empathy toward others and helped me to understand that one's destiny is determined just as much by opportunity as by choice. Of course, the social safety nets enacted by Roosevelt provided more opportunities for families to remove themselves from the cycle of poverty. I think he went overboard but those programs were necessary during this time of hardship. This book should be on the required reading list for high school students so they will learn what genuine poverty involves. The families in this book worked in agricultural fields in grueling conditions picking fruit and moved to where the plants were growing. I think the title of the book refers to two symbols: grape is a symbol of the fruit picking that the workers had to do to survive and the wrath refers to the unfairness of the poverty laid upon them through the lack of opportunities in their lives, through an accident of birth. Steinbeck likely is stating that the grapes of wrath should embolden the leaders of that time to distribute resources more equitably among the disenfranchised which is akin to socialist thought of which Steinbeck favored.