Tom Joad

''The Grapes of Wrath'' is an American realist novel written by John Steinbeck and published in 1939. The book won the National Book Award
and Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and it was cited prominently when Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962.

Set during the Great Depression, the novel focuses on the Joads, a poor family of tenant farmers driven from their Oklahoma home by drought, economic hardship, agricultural industry changes, and bank foreclosures forcing tenant farmers out of work. Due to their nearly hopeless situation, and in part because they are trapped in the Dust Bowl, the Joads set out for California along with thousands of other "Okies" seeking jobs, land, dignity, and a future.

''The Grapes of Wrath'' is frequently read in American high school and college literature classes due to its historical context and enduring legacy. A celebrated Hollywood film version, starring Henry Fonda and directed by John Ford, was released in 1940.

Plot

The narrative begins just after Tom Joad is paroled from McAlester prison, where he had been incarcerated after being convicted of homicide in self-defense. While hitchhiking to his home near Sallisaw, Oklahoma, Tom meets former preacher Jim Casy, whom he remembers from his childhood, and the two travel together. Arriving at Tom's childhood farm home, they find it deserted. Disconcerted and confused, Tom and Casy meet an old neighbor, Muley Graves, who says the family is at Uncle John Joad's home nearby. Graves says the banks have evicted all the farmers. They have moved away, but Muley refuses to leave the area.

The next morning, Tom and Casy go to Uncle John's. Tom's family is loading their remaining possessions into a Hudson sedan converted into a truck; with the crops destroyed by the Dust Bowl, the family has defaulted on their bank loans and their farm has been repossessed. The family sees no option but to seek work in California, which has been described in handbills as fruitful and offering high pay. The Joads put everything they have into making the journey. Although leaving Oklahoma violates his parole, Tom takes the risk, and invites Casy to join the family.

Traveling west on Route 66, the Joads find the road crowded with other migrants. In makeshift camps, they hear many stories from others, some returning from California. The group worries that California may not be as rewarding as suggested. The family dwindles on the way: Grampa dies and they bury him in a field; Granma dies close to the California state line; and both Noah (the eldest Joad son) and Connie Rivers (the husband of the pregnant Joad daughter, Rose of Sharon) leave the family. Led by Ma, the remaining members continue on, as nothing is left for them in Oklahoma.

Reaching California, they find the state oversupplied with labor; wages are low, and workers are exploited to the point of starvation. The big corporate farmers are in collusion and smaller farmers suffer from collapsing prices. All police and state law enforcement authorities are allied with the growers. At the first migrant ''Hooverville'' camp the Joads stop at, Casy knocks down a deputy sheriff who is about to shoot a fleeing worker for alerting others that the labor recruiter, travelling with the officer, will not pay the wages he is promising. Weedpatch Camp, one of the clean, utility-supplied camps operated by the Resettlement Administration, a New Deal agency, offers better conditions but does not have enough resources to care for all the needy families, and it does not provide work or food. Nonetheless, as a Federal facility, the camp protects the migrants from harassment by local deputies.

In response to the exploitation, Casy becomes a labor organizer and tries to recruit for a labor union. The Joads find work as strikebreakers in a peach orchard. After picking for most of the day, they are only paid enough to buy food for that night's supper and some for the next day. The next morning the peach plantation announces that the pay rate for the picked fruit has been reduced by half. Casy is involved in a strike that turns violent. When Tom witnesses Casy being struck and killed with a pickaxe, he kills the attacker and takes flight. The Joads quietly leave the orchard to work at a cotton farm where Tom risks being arrested, and possibly lynched, for the homicide.

Knowing he must leave to avoid capture and protect his family being blacklisted from working, Tom bids his mother farewell and vows to work for the oppressed. The family continues to pick cotton and pool their daily wages to buy food. Upon giving birth, Rose of Sharon's baby is stillborn. Ma Joad remains steadfast and forces the family through the bereavement. With the winter rains, the Joads' dwelling is flooded and the car disabled, and they move to higher ground. In the final chapter of the book, the family takes shelter from the flood in an old barn. Inside they find a young boy and his father, who is dying of starvation. Ma realizes there is only one way to save the man. She looks at Rose of Sharon and a silent understanding passes between them. Rose of Sharon, left alone with the man, goes to him and has him drink her breast milk.

Characters

*Tom Joad: the protagonist of the story; the Joad family's second son, named after his father. Later, Tom takes leadership of the family, even though he is young.
*Ma Joad: the Joad family matriarch. Practical but warm-spirited, she tries to hold the family together. Her given name is never learned; it is suggested that her maiden name was Hazlett.
*Pa Joad: the Joad family patriarch, also named Tom, age 50. Hardworking sharecropper and family man. Pa becomes a broken man upon losing his livelihood and means of supporting his family, forcing Ma to assume leadership.
*Uncle John: Pa Joad's older brother (Tom describes him as "a fella about 60", but in narrative he is described as 50). He feels guilty about the death of his young wife years before, and is prone to binges involving alcohol and prostitutes, but is generous with his goods.
*Jim Casy: a former preacher who lost his faith. He is a Christ-like figure, based on Steinbeck's friend Ed Ricketts.
*Al Joad: the third youngest Joad son, a "smart-aleck sixteen-year-older" who cares mainly for cars and girls; he looks up to Tom, but begins to find his own way.
*Rose of Sharon "Rosasharn" Joad Rivers: the eldest Joad daughter, a childish and dreamy teenage girl, age 18, who develops into a mature woman. Pregnant at the beginning of the novel, she eventually delivers a stillborn baby, perhaps due to malnutrition.
*Connie Rivers: Rose of Sharon's husband. Nineteen years old and naïve, he is overwhelmed by marriage and impending fatherhood. He abandons his wife and the Joad family shortly after they arrive in California.
*Noah Joad: the eldest Joad son, he is the first to leave the family, near Needles, California, planning to live off fishing on the Colorado River. Injured at birth and described as "strange", he may have slight learning difficulties.
*Grampa Joad: Tom's grandfather, who expresses his strong desire to stay in Oklahoma. His full name is given as "William James Joad". Grampa is drugged by his family with " soothin' syrup" to force him to leave with them for California, but he dies during the first evening on the road. Casy attributes his death to a stroke, but says that Grampa is "just' staying' with the lan'. He couldn' leave it."
*Granma Joad: Grampa's religious wife; she loses her will to live after his death. She dies while the family is crossing the Mojave Desert.
*Ruthie Joad: the youngest Joad daughter, age 12. She is shown to be reckless and childish. While quarreling with another child, she reveals that Tom is in hiding.
*Winfield Joad: the youngest Joad son, age 10. He is "kid-wild and calfish".
*Jim Rawley: He manages the camp at Weedpatch and shows the Joads surprising favor.
*Muley Graves: a neighbour of the Joads. He is invited to come along to California with them, but refuses. The family leave two of their dogs with him; a third they take, but it is killed by a car during their travels.
*Ivy and Sairy Wilson: a migrant couple from Kansas who attend the death of Grampa and share the journey as far as the California state line.
*Mr. Wainwright: a fellow laborer on the cotton farm in California; he is the husband of Mrs. Wainwright.
*Mrs. Wainwright: mother to Aggie and wife to Mr. Wainwright. She helps Ma deliver Rose of Sharon's baby.
*Aggie Wainwright: the sixteen-year-old daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Wainwright. Late in the novel, she and Al Joad announce their intent to marry.
*Floyd Knowles: a man at the Hooverville, where the Joads first stay in California, who urges Tom and Casy to join labor organizations. His agitation results in Casy being jailed.

Religious interpretation

Many scholars have noted Steinbeck's use of Christian imagery within ''The Grapes of Wrath''. The largest implications lie with Tom Joad and Jim Casy, who are both interpreted as Christ-like figures at certain intervals within the novel. These two are often interpreted together, with Casy representing Jesus Christ in the early days of his ministry, up until his death, which is interpreted as representing the death of Christ. From there, Tom takes over, rising in Casy's place as the Christ figure risen from the dead.

However, the religious imagery is not limited to these two characters. Scholars have regularly inspected other characters and plot points within the novel, including Ma Joad, Rose of Sharon, her stillborn child, and Uncle John. In an article first published in 2009, Ken Eckert even compared the migrants' movement west as a reversed version of the slaves' escape from Egypt in Exodus. Many of these extreme interpretations are brought on by Steinbeck's own documented beliefs, which Eckert himself refers to as "unorthodox".

To extend on previous remarks in a journal Leonard A. Slade lays out the chapters and how they represent each part of the slaves escaping from Egypt. Slade states “Chapters 1 through 10 correspond to bondage in Egypt (where the bank and land companies fulfill the role of Pharaoh), and the plagues (drought and erosion); chapters 11 through 18 to the Exodus and journey through the wilderness (during which the old people die off); and chapter 19 through 30 to the settlement in the Promised Land-California, whose inhabitants are hostile… formulate ethical codes (in the government camps)”. Another religious interpretation that Slade brings up in his writings is the title itself, stating “The title of the novel, of course refers to the line: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored in Julia Ward Howe’s famous 'Battle-Hymn of the Republic'. Apparently, then the title suggests, moreover, 'that story exists in Christian context, indicating that we should expect to find some Christian meaning'." These two interpretations by Slade and other scholars shows how many religious aspects can be interpreted from the book. Along with Slade other scholars find interpretations in the characters of Rose of Sharon and her stillborn child, Jim Casy and his Christ-like figure.

Development

Steinbeck was known to have borrowed from field notes taken during 1938 by Farm Security Administration worker and author Sanora Babb. While she collected personal stories about the lives of the displaced migrants for a novel she was developing, her supervisor, Tom Collins, shared her reports with Steinbeck, who at the time was working for the ''San Francisco News''. Babb's own novel, '' Whose Names Are Unknown'', was eclipsed in 1939 by the success of ''The Grapes of Wrath'' and was shelved until it was finally published in 2004, a year before Babb's death.

''The Grapes of Wrath'' developed from ''The Harvest Gypsies'', a series of seven articles that ran in the ''San Francisco News'', from October 5 to 12, 1936. The newspaper commissioned that work on migrant workers from the Midwest in California's agriculture industry. (It was later compiled and published separately.)

In mid-January 1939, three months before the publication of ''The Grapes of Wrath'', Steinbeck wrote a long letter to Pascal Covici, his editor at Viking Press. He wanted Covici, in particular, to understand this book, to appreciate what he was up to. And so he concluded with a statement that might serve as preface in and of itself: "Throughout I've tried to make the reader participate in the actuality, what he takes from it will be scaled on his own depth and shallowness. There are five layers in this book, a reader will find as many as he can and he won't find more than he has in himself."

Title

While writing the novel at his home, 16250 Greenwood Lane, in what is now Monte Sereno, California, Steinbeck had unusual difficulty devising a title. ''The Grapes of Wrath'', suggested by his wife Carol Steinbeck, was deemed more suitable than anything by the author. The title is a reference to lyrics from "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", by Julia Ward Howe (emphasis added):

These lyrics refer, in turn, to the biblical passage Revelation 14:19–20, an apocalyptic appeal to divine justice and deliverance from oppression in the final judgment. This and other biblical passages had inspired a long tradition of imagery of Christ in the winepress, in various media. The passage reads:

The phrase also appears at the end of Chapter 25 in Steinbeck's book, which describes the purposeful destruction of food to keep the price high:

The image invoked by the title serves as a crucial symbol in the development of both the plot and the novel's greater thematic concerns: from the terrible winepress of Dust Bowl oppression will come terrible wrath but also the deliverance of workers through their cooperation. This is suggested but not realized within the novel.

Author's note

When preparing to write the novel, Steinbeck wrote: "I want to put a tag of shame on the greedy bastards who are responsible for this he Great Depression and its effects" He famously said, "I've done my damnedest to rip a reader's nerves to rags." His work won a large following among the working class, due to his sympathy for the migrants and workers' movement, and his accessible prose style.

Critical reception

Steinbeck scholar John Timmerman sums up the book's influence: "''The Grapes of Wrath'' may well be the most thoroughly discussed novel – in criticism, reviews, and college classrooms – of 20th century American literature." ''The Grapes of Wrath'' is referred to as a Great American Novel.

At the time of publication, Steinbeck's novel "was a phenomenon on the scale of a national event. It was publicly banned and burned by citizens, it was debated on national radio; but above all, it was read". According to ''The New York Times'', it was the best-selling book of 1939 and 430,000 copies had been printed by February 1940. In that same month, it won the National Book Award, favorite fiction book of 1939, voted by members of the American Booksellers Association."1939 Book Awards Given by Critics: Elgin Groseclose's 'Ararat' is Picked as Work Which Failed to Get Due Recognition", ''The New York Times'', February 14, 1940, page 25. ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851–2007). Soon, it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and its Armed Services Edition went through two printings."Novel"
The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved 8 September 2016.

The book was noted for Steinbeck's passionate depiction of the plight of the poor, and many of his contemporaries attacked his social and political views. Bryan Cordyack wrote: "Steinbeck was attacked as a propagandist and a socialist from both the left and the right of the political spectrum. The most fervent of these attacks came from the Associated Farmers of California; they were displeased with the book's depiction of California farmers' attitudes and conduct toward the migrants. They denounced the book as a 'pack of lies' and labeled it 'communist propaganda'". Some argued that his novel was filled with inaccuracies. In his book ''The Art of Fiction'' (1984), John Gardner criticized Steinbeck for not knowing anything about the California ranchers: "Witness Steinbeck's failure in ''The Grapes of Wrath''. It should have been one of America's great books... einbeck wrote not a great and firm novel but a disappointing melodrama in which complex good is pitted against unmitigated, unbelievable evil." Others accused Steinbeck of exaggerating camp conditions to make a political point. He had visited the camps well before publication of the novel and argued their inhumane nature destroyed the settlers' spirit.

In 1962, the Nobel Prize committee cited ''The Grapes of Wrath'' as a "great work" and as one of the committee's main reasons for granting Steinbeck the Nobel Prize for Literature.

In 2005, ''Time'' magazine included the novel in its "100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005". In 2009, ''The Daily Telegraph'' of the United Kingdom included the novel in its "100 novels everyone should read". In 1999, French newspaper ''Le Monde'' of Paris ranked ''The Grapes of Wrath'' as seventh on its list of the 100 best books of the 20th century. In the UK, it was listed at number 29 among the "nation's best loved novels" on the BBC
...