Book Review: The Grapes of Wrath

John Steinbeck's famous novel is not just a story of a migrant family during the Great Depression. It's also a clear call to action for labor rights, unions, and other causes that still affect people today. As depressing as the book can be, you might be inspired to rethink your stance on immigration or what companies you buy products from.

What it's about

Meet Tom Joad. In the midst of the Great Depression, he returns from prison to Oklahoma and finds his family packing up to move to California. The Dust Bowl has left this farmer family, like their neighbors, destitute and desperate to find work.

As the Joads travel to California, they live in impoverished conditions. They are also warned by someone that agricultural jobs are scarce in California. Once the family reaches its destination, everyone realizes that the state is not the paradise that they imagined.

The Joads do not have the money to buy a farm; they must look to work in someone else's fields. The family moves amongst migrant camps, where unemployment, starvation, and personal conflict plague them. The stronger, more self-sufficient family members like Tom's brother Noah and brother-in-law Connie ditch the family, thinking they'll do better on their own.

The native Californians react with hostility. Landowners are afraid of the migrants' ability to revolt or unionize, so they keep the workers poor and dependent. Police constantly discriminate against the migrants, finding any excuse to shut down the camps (sometimes by burning them down).

The book concludes with sort of an anthem for workers' rights. The reader has seen how horrible migrants must live without protection. Now Tom is inspired to organize workers and make conditions better.

Your favorite part will be...

People's kindness in the midst of hard times. Even though poverty and desperation have created a wasteland, people still share meals, fires, transportation, and other resources with one another.

Tom's speech explaining his call to action. "Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there," he says. He's determined to fight for labor rights.

You can compare the migration from Oklahoma to today's immigration. Much like in Steinbeck's novel, today some Americans hold contempt for immigrants coming to California and other agricultural areas to labor as migrant workers. However, the food industry depends on this cheap labor, and goes through great pains to make sure that it remains cheap. Today, half of all migrant farm workers make less than $20 per day.

The cause-y angles

Poverty

• Tom must illegally stay on his family farm until the police scare him away. He then is forced to sleep outside a cave.
• While the Joads travel, a waitress at a coffee shop refuses a desperate man who asks for a loaf of bread for his family. Eventually warming up to the man's sons and their condition, she sells the boys candy at a large discount.
• Due to employment, the Oklahoma migrants are forced to live in camps called a shanty-town or "Hooverville," named after the President that people blamed for economic woes.
• When the Joads find a fellow migrant starving, Tom's sister Rose-of-Sharon feeds her breast milk to him.

Unemployment

Lack of jobs drive characters to do desperate and sometimes immoral things, including:

• Oklahoma farmers take jobs with the banks, even if it means bulldozing the homes of their friends and neighbors.
• Car salesmen sell rusty old cars at high prices because the departing Oklamahoma farmers are desperate for transportation to California.
• The only time the Joads make a decent wage in California is when they are hired by a ranch owner who is resisting negotiating with workers' on strike.

Labor Rights

• Steinbeck constantly shows a person's struggle between choosing a decent wage and morality over feeding oneself. The speech that the unknown man gives to Pa Joad expresses that because of oversupply of workers and no union to protect them, the most desperate men get hired at unlivable wages while the majority must continue to search for work.
• More self-sufficient characters like Tom's brother and brother-in-law choose to leave the others because they are a burden. In this time, there is no family health insurance or days off to care for a sick child. The men will fair better alone because their families have no protection from a union or the law.
• When the character Knowles tries to demand a contract and a promised wage, the employer has him arrested by the police.
• Tom's last speech in the book (see the quote above) is a vow that he will organize a migrant worker union in order to improve the horrible conditions the reader has seen in the entire book.

Discrimination

• Californians dispise the influx of migrants, calling them the degrading term, "Okies."
• During the Joads' travels, a gas station attendent tells them, "There ain't room enough for you an' for me, for your kind an' my kind, for rich and poor together all in one country."
• As mentioned, the police try any excuse to burn or shut down the migrant camps. Even in the government supported camp, the police attempt to stage a false riot as an excuse to close down the area.