2. Grapes of Wrath (1)

Eight years have gone by since I last read John Steinbeck’s TheGrapes of Wrath. That time span might not be the most significant portion of time, but the mental difference between fourteen and twenty-two is incomparable, with the understanding of the value of life and appreciation for it. As minute and ridiculous as this might sound, the one chapter that has always stayed with me all these years is the short, chapter three—a turtle. All these years later, that’s something significant that stands out to me. The chapter beautifully illustrates the contrasting demeanors of two human beings. First, we almost see a woman crash her car because she’s doing whatever she can to avoid running over a turtle, including possibly even hurting herself. Then, comes the malicious male who guns it for the turtle and eventually hits him. This one of the most symbolic scenes of the entire book because it represents not just the Joad family, but all the other farmers that are being displaced and much try to transcend adversity.

Another painful scene, I don’t know how I forgot about it, was the fact that the banks were paying the farmer’s neighbors to plow anything in their sight. The scene just helped further prove how desperate people were for money—to the point they would accept money from somebody else to destroy a family’s sanctuary, their history, their home.

The truth in this book hurts. The realism is almost too real you want it to be made up. You look at an early chapter, lets say chapter 7, when we see how all the crooked salesmen are doing whatever they can to screw over the desperate families or in chapter 9 when families are forced to pawn their belongings for ridiculously low prices because the pawnbrokers know that they have all the power in this situation. The truth and malicious face of human nature comes across to me the strongest in two books, this one and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. These are two books that I read years ago when I was younger that truly taught me to slow down and look more carefully at our own nature. Just as Steinbeck captures the horror of the depression and the dust bowl, Sinclair, over thirty years early, captured the horror of life for an immigrant trying to help his family survive. To this day, The Jungleremains one of my favorite books and the one I compare most classics too. I think why I brought up The Jungleto compare to TheGrapes of Wrathis because of the similar, almost “undercover” writing that both authors do very well. It’s what makes their point so much stronger.

 “And when the crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted or the growth. Men ate what they had not raised what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses.” (36)
 
One of the main themes running throughout The Grapes of Wrath is the divide between the people and the land. This occurred and deepened as a consequence of the migrant farmers migration west in the 1930’s. I find it really interesting how Steinbeck uses food as a method to expand on this theme.  In the quote above he notes that men no longer knew where their food had come for or had any physical relation to the food they ate. This disconnect between the people and the labor of creating food has greater implications in that the food is not engendered through passion and care. No love or feeling has gone into its creation and so the consuming is no longer as personal or passionate. 
 
The mechanization of the farming process plays a great role in displacing workers from their land.  The wider implications of this disconnect are that people no longer see farmers as individuals but as larger companies or machines.  When we conceptualize something such as farming into something that no longer implies individual labor but becomes a generalized and mechanized notion, it is easier to overlook the individuals place in the process. To me this was part of the problem of the migrant workers during the depression. They became part of a statistic along with having their labor be mechanized consequently eliminating jobs.  They weren’t cared for because they were under the guise of being part of a statistic. 
 
I find Steinbeck’s mode of exploring this idea through the consumption of food to be very intriguing because eating is such a primal instinct.  However, when the process of consuming food our lives are fundamentally changed. He is able to explore a nation wide shift through an extremely personal and relatable experience. Also, because we have to eat to sustain ourselves, the act is unavoidable and so the change becomes inevitable.  Being removed from the food the characters consume in the book is an inevitable change in their culture.
 
Looking at our world today this idea has become increasingly problematic.  The problem of not knowing where our food comes from and this taking less care in what we consume has created many more problems.  Americans have become arguably more removed from their land and thus take less care in preserving it. Problems such as obesity, over-farming, and factory farms have emerged from this disconnect.  It is interesting to look at The Grapes of Wrath as the beginning of many modern problems within American maintenance of it’s own land.

This week’s issue of The Economist caught my attention. While I might not always peruse through my roommate’s copy of the magazine, the cover image was the Dorothea Lange photo shown to us on the first day of The Travel Habit. The cover also announced a 14-page report on the “Future of Work.”

A section of the jobs report called “My Pleasure” reminded me of a question I had been asking while reading the first dozen or so chapters of The Grapes of Wrath: what is satisfying work? What is honest work? And how has this changed in the time between the Great Depression and the Great Recession?

John Steinbeck, a clear supporter of the working class, beautifies the image of the hard-shelled, rough around the edges farmers of the time and it’s no question that the banks of the time are the monsters of the novel. As early as page 9 of The Grapes of Wrath, the driver who picks up Tom Joad says, “Been swingin’ a pick or an ax or a sledge. That shines up your hands. I notice all stuff like that. Take pride in it.” And when describing what the “tenant man” says to the owner of the land: “We measured it and broke it up. We were born on it, and we got killed on it, died on it… That makes ownership, not a paper with numbers on it” (33).  There is no question that this suffering, ruggedness and hands-on relationship with their work are why many writers went out to travel with migrant workers during the Great Depression to begin with (which we noticed when reading the introductory assignments for last week’s class).

But what is satisfying work today? The Economist notes that “the idea that work can be a source of positive pleasure is spreading” into new fields. There has been a rise in under-30s in rich countries seeking work at not-for-profits and jobs that have a social purpose for a lower salary than they might have otherwise. While jobs assisting the “time-poor new rich” often pay more than these non-profit organizations (i.e. a head butler can make up to $250,000 a year and a private secretary up to $150,000 according to The Economist) there does not seem to be an exodus towards this type of work, especially in the largely unemployed global youth (read the whole article here). Personally, as I’m sure almost all of the Gallatin population would say, I would much rather work at a non-profit than be someone’s private secretary for twice the pay. I’m not sure if that means my soon-to-be college degree makes me too proud or that I seek to find satisfaction in my wok. Perhaps it’s a combination of both.

I enjoy Steinbeck’s storytelling because it described to the reader a time in history through a series of personal vignettes. The characters conversations, mannerisms, and living conditions shed light on the desperation the 30’s brought to America; so I naturally wonder: what was it like to be a teenager during those trying times? Youth, so full of opportunity and naïve optimism, surely could not ignore the crumbling world around them for long with their families losing their jobs and their schools closing down.  How did they deal with it? What were their lives like starting out in the world on their own only to find there wasn’t much out there for them?
 
Millions took to the road, catching the next train out of town and turning into vagabonds, hobos. For some it must have been exciting and adventurous, but for others it was the only choice left as their families could not afford to support them any longer. Imagine a time not too long ago when you could see children as young as 10 fending for themselves out on the open road where anything could happen. This is the way many of our grandparents and their parents grew up and lived. Jumping trains rose to such great heights that Warner Brother’s put out a movie in 1933 warning kids about the dangers of riding freight trains; this of course only peeked their interests.
 
Just as the characters in Steinbeck's novels, the young vagabonds rode the frieght trains to big cities, where they could ship out abroad, or out west, where many settled and earned jobs picking fruit and vegetables. But the cities didn’t offer much help either, except for the missions, which provided food and a place to sleep in exchange for saving your soul. Most towns were hostile towards outsiders; some towns even denied medical care to transients, choosing to dump them outside of the cities lest they get the others sick.
 
These young transients developed a hobo culture using slang and sign code and creating their own stories and songs. The bulls were the police. A sit-down was a meal with a family. A tray was food brought out to you. More importantly however, they had seen and heard things that would forever change their young lives. The road was a terribly lonely place, one that could break your spirit and leave you feeling defeated. They began to question the government, society, and the world at large. They struggled to find direction but yearned for it greatly.  They came out of the experience to form a generation of great men and women who value(d) stability, hard work, and good pay. For some the end of the road would come during WWII, for others it was just the beginning of a long life that would come to shape the America we know today.

 
Last week we studied traveling in our conventional understanding of the word. To travel is to go see and understand new and foreign people, places, etc. We contemplated the type of experience one gets from traveling, whether he sees “reality” in his travels, and whether his predetermined ideas limit his interpretations of his experience.
 
This week however, we are reading about stories of people who travel because they have to.  Or should we say that they migrate because they have to? Travel just sounds wrong. But technically travel is what they did.
 
Unlike the writers from last week, they were forced on the road, on their “travels”, as a different form of themselves. They were transformed into this form by their objectless lives, by their tilted house, by the absence of that willow tree, by their hallow past.
 
 “How can we live without our lives? How will we know it’s us without our past? No. Leave it. Burn it.
They sat and looked at it and burned it into their memories. How’ll it be not to know what land’s outside the door? How if you wake up in the night and know—know the willow tree’s not there? Can you live without the willow tree? Well, no, you can’t. The willow tree is you. The pain on that mattress there—that dreadful pain—that’s you” p. 89 ch 9
 
 
Is this type of travel then truly equivalent to the writers traveling the country in search of reality, and the American tourists who ride the trains around Europe? Technically it is.
 
Are people like the Joads then, seeing the “real thing” or are the writers from last week? Are they getting a more genuine travel experience because they are not looking for it? Or  are travelers in search of something, who are not transformed until the end of their journey, are they able to see and understand more of the world?
 
I think that you come to understand the world differently when you are not in search of understanding. The Joads come to understand the nature of people when they are in their most desperate state, the nature of a family that needs each other, and the nature of red lines and policies that come in their way. When people undergo something intense together, they learn basic and primitive things about humanity that are so raw they would oversee it if they were looking for it.
 
On the other hand, those travelers in search of meaning and understanding see things that those too preoccupied with surviving really can not see. They are comfortable enough to observe things that do not fall in their life path, the natural actions they undergo to push their lives forward. They have the luxury of contemplating their observations in juxtaposition to their other knowledge, and forming distinct meaning from them about the world.
 
One is not more real than the other. They are just different pieces of something that is all very real.

Corn is a powerful thing for Americans. Its ubiquity in the Midwestern United States and American recipe books has made it something of an icon in American culture. One need look no further than the quadrennial Ames Straw Poll and its pervasive agricultural imagery to understand the symbolic political power of “the farmer’s life.” For many, the patchwork fields of the Great Plains stitch together the true America, a patriotic sub-nation of proud, simple people living off the land with corn as their staple. In the late 1920s, “the heartland” was perhaps even more powerful a symbol for the simple fact that agriculture was a more widespread way of life. In recent decades most Americans have become familiar with the symbols of American farming and the quaint, pleasant landscapes they evoke. But in 1930, when roughly one-third of Americans lived on a farm, the agrarian lifestyle—and the brutally efficient grain market—was an extremely powerful force on the nation’s economy and collective psychology. Thus John Steinbeck’s place-setting imagery of thick Dust Bowl clouds slowly withering and obscuring fields of corn in the opening pages of The Grapes of Wrath has a vivid and compelling significance.
 
The novel opens with an extended description of the destruction of a season’s worth of crops. “As the sharp sun struck day after day, the leaves of the young corn became less stiff and erect; they bent in a curve at first, and then, as the central ribs of strength grew weak, each leaf tilted downward” (1). This highly detailed description is important to establishing the world of the Great Depression. The slow death of crops mirrors the decline of the US economy. Just as importantly, the ever-present clouds of dust that rise and settle throughout Oklahoma tell us something tragic about the collective plight of Dust Bowl farmers. “The dawn came, but no day… Men and women huddled in their houses, and they tied handkerchiefs over their noses when they went out, and wore goggles to protect their eyes” (2-3). Being unable to see livelihoods crash down through a haze of destruction adds to the hopelessness of the destruction itself. Steinbeck communicates that in the midst of the Depression—an inescapable pall of countless specks of dust accumulating steadily—American farmers were quite literally blinded to the potentiality of the seeds they had sown all their lives. To them, corn was not simply a staple; it represented their sole lifeline to prosperity and their expression of the American Dream. With this taken away from them, the national attitude went from “bemused perplexity” to “hard, angry, and resistant” (3).
 
In 2011 it is difficult to imagine an occupation whose imagined future is tied so closely to so tangible and immersive a symbol as a field of corn. In the 1930s, the gradual destruction of this symbol had a blinding and a traumatizing effect. For a farmer, not only financial hopes and individual American Dreams, but a very immediate physical and psychological reliance is pinned on farming. The national economic decline was a macrocosm for the personal alienation and disorientation experienced by farmers squinting to watch their lives literally dry up and disappear. This identity-stripping ordeal led to desperation on an existential level, and many never found an answer to the question of “if I’m a farmer with no farm, who am I?” Thus, disoriented by luck and emboldened by need, the Joads, along with the rest of America, turned to new forces in their lives—a nascent welfare government (which was much more promise than presence), and, perhaps more nefariously, advertising. With reality evaporating, the Joads, along with many other Americans, looked to create a new reality founded largely on imagination—thus the power of billboards, salesmen, preachers, and stories of California. Naturally, many used travel as a tool to abuse the growing power of the American imagination and demand for new fantasies. In these ways, by chance and predatory action, the once-real American Dream was reduced to husks of symbols and replaced by illusory fantasies. 

The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck’s iconic American travel tome opens with greater emphasis put on the physicality of the American landscape, rather than the people who inhabit it. The life cycle of the Oklahoma red country controls the farmers who work the land and can disrupt entire cultures and ways of life that are built around it.
 
The story centers on the Joad family and their push west after being displaced from their farm by the blameless monster of capitalism.  While the Joad’s story does take precedent, the reader is constantly reminded that they are only one example of countless number of families moving west.  The universality of the Joad experience is consistently referenced with Steinbeck’s insertion of chapters with a decidedly more allegorical bent dealing with common themes of American’s moving west. 
 
Besides these chapters not dealing directly with the Joad narrative, they seem to pay greater attention to the land itself.  The opening chapter meanders poetically through the process of the land drying out and crusting over with dust – the central conflict that precipitates families moving out west.
 
Another formal construct that Steinbeck employs to emphasis the power of the land itself can be seen at the open and close of most chapters in the novel.  Chapters are bookended with several sentences describing qualities of the land before and after telling a specific part of the Joad’s saga.  This effectively boxes the character’s story within the harsh confines of the land – further illustrating how so many were ruined by the dust of Oklahoma and how their only salvation lies in the journey to the idyllic fertile lands of the west.
 
One final example of the power the land holds over the people in The Grapes of Wrath can be seen in two characters: the eccentric Muley Graves and Grandpa Joad.  Muley stays behind when his family goes west because he feels such strong ties to the land where he came from.  He chooses to live life like an “ol’ graveyard ghos’” (pg 51), prowling around at night and hiding from the authorities.  Grandpa Joad barely made it beyond state lines before he suffering a stroke and dying in a tent on the side of the road.
 
From plot points to styles of writing Steinbeck makes it clear that these characters, representative of an entire class of people, are firmly not in control of their own destiny and remain at the mercy of the land they had once controlled.

“The hell with it! There ain’t no sin and there ain’t no virtue. There’s just stuff people do. It’s all part of the same thing. And some of the things folks do is nice, and some ain’t nice, but that’s as far as any man got a right to say.”
 
As Steinbeck embarks on The Grapes of Wrath, he immediately draws the reader’s sympathies to several characters that are admittedly flawed. Jim Casy enters the novel early, creating a jolt of dialogue and an interesting moral dilemma. After straying from his position as a preacher, Casy struggles with guilt for having behaved immorally and having been a religious leader for the wrong reasons. Through Casy, Steinbeck creates an almost amusing dichotomy in which a character who defies traditional religious values, also exemplifies the sense of camaraderie and integrity that seems to be holding society together.
 
Tom also rejects the societal sense of guilt, openly discussing the crime that kept him in prison for four years. A secret would seem dark and depraved, but embracing one’s “crime” indicates sincerity and honesty.
 
Big organizations – banks, churches and, by extension, government – seem perennially untrustworthy. They become great faceless enemies. “It’s not us,” writes Steinbeck, “it’s the bank. A bank isn’t like a man. Or an owner with fifty thousand acres, he isn’t like a man either. That’s the monster” (33).  Even a man working for the bank is depicted as intrinsically good; he rapes and pillages land like a soldier enslaved to his government, doing so only in order to bring home three dollars to his family.
 
Casy plays an important role in the formation of Grapes of Wrath’s moral guidelines and ethos of self-reliance. He derives pleasure from the human spirit, both in friendship and in love, and is unwilling to feel guilt because of it. Steinbeck glorifies the individual, showing him as a great, lonely wanderer. Characters seem to relate through this loneliness, reaching out through common needs and desires such as sex, liquor and food.
 
Furthermore, Steinbeck invokes religion in an interesting manner. He seems to renounce the organization of the church but continually makes biblical references (Tom Joad remembers his prison nickname, “Jesus Meek (26)). While a sincere distrust of big organizations is developing, we begin to see societal guidelines of morals, faith and friendship reinstated by characters themselves. 

Tom Joad’s homecoming is not what he expected. The once flourishing farm he was raised on is now a barren wasteland, and only one stubborn neighbor remains. It seems life as he knew it is on the brink of disaster,  and the Joad’s turn to their final viable option-California. The move from Dust Bowl to rich agricultural fields seemed to be the natural step for suffering workers and their families. It is estimated that 1.3 million people migrated West in the 1930s, the largest exodus in American history. This created a group of mostly seasonal farmers who were scorned by the local population. “Okies”, as the Joads are referred to, is not a term of endearment, but a jeer towards the influx of foreigners.
 
California however, was not the promised land people had hoped for. “Although the weather was comparatively balmy and farmers' fields were bountiful with produce, Californians also felt the effects of the Depression. Local and state infrastructures were already overburdened, and the steady stream of newly arriving migrants was more than the system could bear. After struggling to make it to California, many found themselves turned away at its borders. Those who did cross over into California found that the available labor pool was vastly disproportionate to the number of job openings that could be filled.” The few migrants who were fortunate enough to be employed were paid low wages, barely enough to support their families. They also were faced with the harsh realities of continued travel; to maintain a job, workers had to follow the crop around the state, from the North to the Mexican border. Many families were forced to reside in “ditch bank” camps, tents along irrigation trails that harbored disease and became a public health concern.
 
During recreational time, many migrants took solace in music. They adopted traditional ballads of their own, some that continue to be covered today. Many also wrote their own music about the disappoints they faced in California. Jack Bryant’s Sunny Cal is an example of the typical folk song the migrants sang. For some, California was ultimately a failure, a jobless promise land that provided no opportunities for out of towners. For others however, it provided them with exactly what they needed-security and an escape from a drought that seemed to never end. California the golden indeed. 
 

 
 
“This you may say of man – when theories change and crash, when schools, philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of thought, national, religious, economic, grow and disintegrate, man reaches, stumbles forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes” (Steinbeck 150).  The time of the Great Depression damaged lives inconceivably.  Most people felt so far from normalcy that the ground underneath them seemed to be unreliable.  These people were “hungry for security and yet sens[ed] its disappearance from the earth” (Steinbeck 155).  What ultimately left the nation during the 1930’s was faith: faith in the land, faith within the people, and most importantly, faith within the church. 
 
The whole country was a mess.  Inevitably, the church went into the gutter with the people.  “The sperit [wasn’t] in the people much” (Steinbeck 20).  But not only that, everything seemed to have its own kind of spirit drained out of it. Cars were literally “limping along 66 like wounded things, panting and struggling” (Steinbeck 122).  Faith in life diminished.  People’s cars started to simply fall apart, piece-by-piece, and finding a new part became a nightmare with the cars salesmen who had lost all faith in their businesses, too.  Houses became deserted and dilapidated, due to the “monster” that was ordered to shove them onto their sides. It became hard to believe in anything.
 
But the flame was still ignited in some people.  Churches may have been small, even by today’s standards, but there were definitely people out there who “had the Sperit in  ‘em.” Reverend Casy, a crucial character in the book, is one of these people.  Upon meeting him, Casy seemed to be a lost preacher, who didn’t “have the call no more” (Steinbeck 20).  But by saying “no more,” he implies that he had the call at one point in time, before the devastation fell upon the country.  He corroborates this fact by reminiscing about Tom Joad’s baptism in the irrigation ditch, and how he was “fightin’ an’ yellin’” during the whole ceremony (Steinbeck 20).  You can also tell that there was once a flame of religion lit in the people of Joad’s area once we are introduced to his grandmother.  She insists on “grace fust” (before breakfast) once Joad and Reverend Casy get to Uncle John’s house in the early morning-time (Steinbeck 80).  For this reason, Casy knows that people will need him: He had a feeling that these people were going to need help no other preacher could give them.  “Hope of heaven when their lives ain’t lived? Holy Sperit when their own sperit is downcast an’ sad? They gonna need help.  They got to live before they can afford to die” (Steinbeck 52).  And thus, Reverend Casy transformed into a kind, compassionate, and soft man that became part of the Joad family from that point onward.
 
But we still see signs of the apocalypse of religious trust.  People do not count on bread at service stations; they have no faith.  The particular lack of reliance on God is shown twice; first when Ma cannot account for her life in California; when she refuses to believe in anything positive.  It also happens toward the end of chapter 16, when a stranger tells the Joads and Wilsons that his wife and two children died on their journey to California.  Immediately, Tom and Pa demand if that will be the case for them.  But Reverend Casy, the spark and hope, the positive force behind this traveling family, and ultimately the fighting cause against the death of faith, replies simply “That was the truth for him (the stranger), and encourages the pack to keep moving onward, that they may have a different experience than this particular stranger did” (Steinbeck 191).  But to move on, “where does the courage come from? Where does the terrible faith come from” (Steinbeck 122)?

In John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Tom Joad meets his old preacher, Jim Casy, just after leaving prison. However, Tom Joad quickly learns that he’s “[j]ust Jim Casy now. Ain’t got the call no more. Got a lot of sinful idears—but they seem kinda sensible” (27). With the character of Jim Casy, Steinbeck seems to be making a statement on the loss of faith during the Depression. When even the preacher, formerly a “Burning Busher,” stops believing in religion, that marks a sign of hopelessness (27). Although some have compared Jim Casy to a Christ figure, I am not completely convinced; however, I do believe that he embodies the state of religious belief in the Great Depression.
 
In the Depression, we see that many people, including the Joad family, became more self-reliant. Many of them had no choice—they lost their jobs and had to invent a solution for themselves to survive. The Joad family is just one example of the families that packed up and moved West. They abandoned all that they had known and set out on their own path. Jim Casy does the same thing in his spiritual journey. He says, “’What’s this call, this sperit?...It’s love. I love people so much I’m fit to bust, sometimes.’ An’ I says [to myself] ‘Don’t you love Jesus?’….’No, I don’t know nobody named Jesus. I know a bunch of stories, but I only love people.’…I can’t be a preacher no more because I thought it an’ I believe it” (32). Jim Casy is not ashamed or embarrassed by the fact that he gave up his job to lead a life of what most consider to be sin. He simply began thinking more independently and deciding his own future. The same concept applies to the lifestyle of the migrant workers in the Depression. They unabashedly left what they knew behind; they were taking control of their own futures because it was simply what they had to do.
 
Furthermore, Casy consistently insists and reminds Tom Joad that he is no longer a preacher; it is as if he does not want to look back on his old life. Similarly, we can imagine that many in Great Depression did not want to remember what their lives had formerly been. In a financially insecure time, one can reap no benefit from looking back on the past. This concept is yet another explanation as to why so many set out on the road during the 1930’s—they recognized that America was a different place, and they moved on physically so as to move on culturally.

“To California or any place- every one a drum major leading a parade of hurts, marching with our bitterness.”
 
As Steinbeck describes the many people on route to California, such as Tom Joad, the reader can imagine a scene of desolation and disparity.  He uses many adjectives to describe the land in particular and, it is through his descriptions of the setting that allow us to sense the horrific experience these people were having.  The bitterness he writes about is exemplified through the interactions and reactions that go on between the characters.  For example, the wives in many families hovered cautiously beside their husbands waiting for a reaction that could either make, or break, the family.  The men, in this case, become the leaders of the parade. 
 
When the book begins to seem as though nothing good can come from the Dust Bowl, Steinbeck writes, “the people in flight from the terror behind- strange things happen to them, some bitterly cruel and some so beautiful that the faith is refired forever”.  This sentence follows the story of a large family left with nothing but a trailer of junk. A young man picked them up alongside Route 66, fed them, and got them to California faster than the average trip.  Again Steinbeck uses the word ‘bitter’.  Is this bitterness a shared feeling between everyone, or did the Dust Bowl give some people the push they needed to make more out of their lives?
 
While some men were willing to stay behind, others traveled right alongside their families.  It is interesting to look at the different roles men and women had in their families.  Some of the mannerisms are still seen today, for example, the women looking up to the men.  However, women have become much more independent and self-reliable.  The close-knit family structure is not as common today as it had been in the past.  By describing the journey of a particular family, the Joads, Steinbeck is able to provide a personal account of a common situation.  His scattered side stories provide insight into the lives of others while continuing to focus primarily on the Joads.  The idea of bitterness is a reoccurring theme that Steinbeck seems to bring up.  The farmers traveling to California were bitter, and rightfully so, but the stories of hope amongst families create the sense of faith seen even in the individuals who seemed to have lost it all.  The acts of what Steinbeck refers to as kindness between characters also establishes a sense of community, and the struggle toward the west becomes a common reality to all.   
 

Is there a point to traveling if you have to do it on your own?  So many people on the road during the depression were on the move with their families or artistic partners or fellow unemployed companions.  These people had people with whom they could commiserate and/or share the experiences they were having while being on the road.
 
I immediately wondered about a truck driver’s companions when reading about the driver of the “OKLAHOMA CITY TRANSPORT COMPANY” truck (Steinbeck,8).  It seems that until Tom Joad showed up and asked him for a ride, the only times the truck driver got any company was when he was able to stop for “a cup of coffee and a piece of pie” even though he’s “hardly ever hungry…[he’s] just goddamn sick of going” (Steinbeck,15).  When he stops he gets to talk to whatever waitress is there for a bit before he returns to the lonesome road.  I feel that Caldwell, in his essay “Some American People,” would argue that this is not traveling because the driver is simply trying to get from point a to point b as quickly as possible; rarely taking notice of his surroundings.  I wonder if having a companion in the truck would help or hinder his traveling ability.  My initial reaction is that his having a companion may not at first help him because when Joad first joins him, all the driver does is talk to Joad and ask him questions.  However, were the driver given the chance to have a partner for longer than just a shot ride, perhaps the two could point out their surroundings to one another.  That being said, Caldwell would still be unhappy as the two would not truly be experiencing American life just simply by taking note of it while passing by.  But it would be a start!
 
And why shouldn’t a driver be allowed a companion?  Why does “some rich bastard make him carry a sticker” that says “No Riders” on the windshield? (Steinbeck, 11).  When I looked up “truck drivers in the depression,” rather than find out what these poor, lonely guys were transporting all over the place during that time, I discovered that depression is very common amongst truck drivers due to their long hours, lack of sleep and much time spent alone!  I think it is time that truck drivers receive a companion to help make their jobs more bearable and their travel time more valuable. 

“Salesmen, neat, deadly, small intent eyes watching for weakness.”
-John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (83)

Within The Grapes of Wrath, the events surrounding the Dust Bowl captivate my interest in relation to the acts of corruption and fraud that occurred. In order to better understand the hardships of the time, the Dust Bowl should first be defined more clearly: when did the Dust Bowl occur, and what were some of its components?According to Geoff Cunfer of Southwest Minnesota State University,“…for those eight years [1933-1941] crops failed, sandy soils blew and drifted over failed croplands, and rural people, unable to meet cash obligations, suffered through tax delinquency, farm foreclosure, business failure, and out-migration.” It is evident that as the migrant workers lost their crops, land, and homes, they became more and more susceptible to scams, especially ones related to monetary wealth.

Such corrupt actions are intriguing to me due to their harsh nature in a time when many were fighting to stick together and present a united front. It is difficult to imagine men who were so willing to take from those who were clearly suffering! During the Dust Bowl, many families headed west in hope of a more promising economy and job stability, and it was during this period of transition that some fell prey to the unjust. In The Grapes of Wrath, Pa Joad addresses the sneaky ways of a salesman: “Got skinned on the stuff we sold. The fella knowed we couldn’t wait. Got eighteen dollars only” (136).
.

The lyrics in the Mumford and Sons song “Dustbowl Dance” speak to such abuse of 1930s migrants by calling out their oppressors: “Your oppression reeks of your greed and disgrace…How can you love what it is you have got when you took it all from the weak hands of the poor? Liars and thieves you know not what is in store.” According to an article written by author Karen S. Lynch, “The social differences between the rich and poor, and the corruption that existed during the Great Depression kept most people silent about their plight.” It is also interesting to note that  Steinbeck wrote, ‘The vilification of me out here from the large landowners and bankers is pretty bad,’ referring to powerful men who were allegedly upset that he had written about salesmen and others, tainting the view of such public figures. As a gas station employee laments in The Grapes of Wrath, “It ain’t that I’m tryin’ to git trade outa rich folks…I’m jus’ tryin’ to git trade” (172). The previous quote highlights the face that  the salesmen, bankers, and other public figures were trying to survive just as the migrants were; some went about it in a corrupt way while others chose to be fair in their tactics. 

John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath may have hit a theme that some of us have overlooked. While traveling has become so popular during this particular time period, it seems as if the Joads are completely against traveling to begin with. It ends up being their only viable option and so they jumped on the band wagon and did what everyone else was doing at the time; traveling. But the word “travel” in this sense is much different than traveling like Anderson or Asch did. The Joads were forced to pick up what was left of their lives and move everything west; uprooting and starting all over. While other travelers were out on the road trying to understand the severity of the depression, they were seeking out real people like the Joads. These other recreational travelers had a home and a life to go back to.

I think this really defines the word travel into two categories: vacationing and moving. Both require traveling to be done, but reflect traveling in two very different lights. The Joads were clearly unwilling to move out of their house and begin a new life somewhere else. It’s understandable that they didn’t want to be kicked out, but if the government hadn’t repossessed their farm they would have been completely content on staying in Oklahoma forever. How much of their travels are due to survival? This is expressed a little more through Grampa Joad when he puts his foot down and decides that he doesn’t want to go. Eventually they have to go to such lengths as to drug him and force him into the car. Perhaps this is the underlying reason for his death; he left his heart in Oklahoma.
 
It seems to me that traveling for the average person during the 1930’s ended up being more of a necessity than an adventure. People were losing their jobs and land, leaving them no other option but to travel. This is what led the writers and photographers to set out on an adventure and capture the stories of these nomadic people. Was it this large migration of people that ended up pushing others to start traveling? In the end it comes down to the question of who even started the trend of traveling. Was it the writers, artists, photographers? The families forced off their property? Maybe it came down to cause. What caused people to travel? What were they looking for? Work? A story? An answer?