The world is now going through a severe crisis caused by the corona
virus disease. Different people and nations deal with the crisis in their own
ways. The way you deal with a crisis reflects your character.
America went through a severe national crisis in 1930s. There was the
Dust Bowl tragedy which damaged the ecology and agriculture of the great
prairies. Then there was the severe economic depression. John Steinbeck’s
novel, The Grapes of Wrath, is set in the background of the dust
bowl tragedy and the great depression.
The Joad family is one of the many that moves out from Oklahoma to
California in search of livelihood following the dust bowl tragedy that
rendered their lands useless for cultivation. Highway 66 is overcrowded with
migrants moving to a place where there will be 20,000 people waiting to secure
the 800 available jobs in one Californian orchard alone. There are thousands
more like them looking for livelihoods. Many of these migrants die on the way.
Many leave their families and choose some other destinations.
The migrants’ camps in California are overcrowded. They are no more
American citizens but “Okies”, the nickname given by the people of California
who are better off. If you
are weak, the world will weaken you further and then exploit you as much as
they can. That is the general human nature. The Californians are no
different. They exploit the Okies inhumanly. As a result tension mounts in the
migrant camps.
Tom Joad and Jim Casy are two young men from the migrant camps who
struggle to assert their human rights against the greedy and selfish Californian
landlords. Tom was released from an Oklahoma prison just before the migration
began. His crime: murder. The prison taught him some good lessons, however. Jim
was a preacher before joining the migrants. He gave up preaching upon the
realisation that divinity was
not sitting up somewhere in the heavens but was to be discovered among human
beings. Tom and Jim become the champions of justice for migrants. Both
get into trouble eventually. If you espouse noble causes, you cannot escape
troubles.
Tom and Jim organise the migrants into a trade union. The police are
after them. Jim knocks down a sheriff and is soon arrested. He is killed by the
police. Tom kills a police officer and has to go into hiding. The Joad family sneaks
away from the camp into a cotton farm. When the cotton season is over, they
have no work and don’t know what to do. They move into a dry barn for safety
from the floods. Rose of Sharon, Tom’s sister, gives birth to a stillborn
child. Her husband had already abandoned her.
There is abundance on one
side, the side of the landlords. There is starvation on the other, the side of
the migrants. Ma Joad sees a young boy weeping because his father
is dying of starvation. Whatever food the man managed to get, he was giving it
to the son. Ma Joad gives a signal to Rose of Sharon and asks everyone else to
move out. Rose opens her blouse and puts the dying man’s mouth to her lactating
breast.
The novel is about the human capacity for compassion against the inhuman
greed of capitalists. The
corporate sector is alluded to in the novel as “ritualised thievery”. California had an abundance of
wealth and yet thousands of people starved there.
The novel infuriated the Californian landlords who demanded a ban on it.
They burnt a copy of the book symbolically. But the truth remained that the
Californian landlords were originally squatters who displaced the Mexicans and
grabbed their lands.
You can be a grabber or you can be compassionate. “There ain’t no sin
and there ain’t no virtue. There’s just stuff people do.” The novel says. Who decides what is sin and what
is virtue? Those in power think that exploiting the poor is a virtue.
The poor think that sharing whatever little they have is a virtue. What is sin?
What is virtue? Steinbeck leaves you with the final image of Rose of Sharon and
the dying man in her lap.
PS. This is part of a series being written for the #BlogchatterA2Z
Challenge. The previous parts are:
Tomorrow: The Hungry Tide
Economic divide is mother of all pain in any society. Common grief or hardship does bind the people together. This is story/ drama is quite a representation of various layers of anarchy in the society through its moving script and many stories involved in one plot.
ReplyDeleteIt's not difficult to bring about a better society. Where lies the problem? We'll be looking at that with Golding's Lord of the Flies next week.
DeleteThe world has always been unfair and it continues to be so. The extreme divide is more obvious in times of crisis. History is cyclical and not much changes in times of crisis. We may have better technology but we continue to be the same people spaces apart.
ReplyDeleteI had Grapes of Wrath as part of the syllabus in Post Grad.
In spite of all the wealth we have - the country has, I mean - we're still struggling to manage miserable poverty. Paradoxical. Wrong systems, wrong people in high places.
DeleteTotally.
DeleteThat is a very touching story. The poor and the weak are always trodden upon and exploited all the time. This rule of the haves have nots has persisted for centuries.
ReplyDeleteThe world belongs to the few who know how to grab. The grabbers are rulers. So nothing will improve.
DeleteOne of my all time favourite books. Nice to get more about quality books through your posts.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy writing about these books.
DeleteAges have passed but the economic divide still remains. I wonder if there can ever be a system that gets rid of it.
ReplyDeleteIt is possible to eradicate that divide. But people don't want to. It's good to have the poor for various reasons.
DeleteAnother classic well reviewed by you. I hope to read it some day.
ReplyDeleteNoor Anand Chawla
There's a movie too.
DeleteCoincidently we both have the same sentence in today post.
ReplyDeleteGood review sir... We all witnesses the economic divide only when it comes to a stage of crisis
Revolutions have broken out because of that divide. Now the nature itself seems to be making certain corrections.
DeleteHave heard about this book, but havent read it as yet. Your post has compelled me to add it on top of my TBR list.
ReplyDeleteAll the best.
DeleteThe end of the book must have been quite hard hitting. Makes me wonder how many such stories will be there to tell after this pandemic and its effects
ReplyDeleteYes, that ending became a classical image that refused to fade from memories of readers. Now we are passing through similar hard times.
DeleteIf you are weak the world will weaken you further... That's how it's always been... Economic divide has always been there and will continue..... While there doesn't seem a solution for the strong ruling over the weak....and if the divide were eradicated in some way... I wonder how that kind of economy would be... Would it be sustainable! There was an economic article I had read on this once which had argued well about this theory too!
ReplyDeleteI believe the problem is not with systems or theories but with human selfishness and greed. So the solution should ideally remain there: in human heart.
Delete