Research Paper on "Grapes of Wrath"

Research Paper 5 pages (1769 words) Sources: 8

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Grapes of Wrath

An Analysis of Steinbeck's Deliverance from "The Grapes of Wrath"

The title for John Steinbeck's 1939 chronicle of migrant Oklahoman workers, pejoratively nicknamed "Okies," is a reference to the balled by Julia Ward Howe, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." In that famous Civil War ballad, Howe writes, "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on." A number of images and symbols are evoked in Howe's lines, and Steinbeck uses them throughout the course of his novel the Grapes of Wrath, itself a representation of the kind of social injustice, isolation, marginalization, forced migration, and poverty alluded to by Howe. Yet despite such obstacles, Steinbeck creates a cast of characters that embody the humanistic spirit of Whitman and Emerson -- a spirit of unconditional love for all people, better termed a philosophy than a religion. This paper will analyze Steinbeck's philosophy in the novel and show how it relates to the meaning implied by "the grapes of wrath" and ultimately promises deliverance.

The character of Jim Casy is a former preacher of the Holy Spirit now philosopher of the kind of naturalistic, humanistic thought spread by American poets Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman. Casy confesses to Tom Joad early in the novel that he cannot reconcile his sinful nature with his holy vocation. He recognizes that love is at the root of all his actions, but he fails to recognize that he is fundamentally torn between love of self and love of God. It was 4th century philosopher and theologian Augustine who taught that all actions were founded in love, that all love was essentially rooted in God, but that sin was misplaced love -- love that was directed not toward God and motivated by His will but rather toward some other end and motivated by selfishness and a will contrary to God's (Jones 17). Casy, likely ignorant of Augustine's doctrine, unintentionally adopts the ethos of American naturalism and humanism, which emphasizes love and negates the difference between virtue and vice. As Casy says, "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" (Steinbeck 23). Casy abandons the notion that love has anything to do with the "Holy Sperit" or "Jesus," and concludes that "maybe it's all men an' all women we love; all that's the Holy Sperit -- the human sperit -- the whole shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul ever'body's a part of" (Steinbeck 23). Casy's honesty is almost too much for Tom Joad to bear and he lowers his eyes so as to deflect "the naked honesty" emanating from Casy's eyes (Steinbeck 24).

One of the points of Casy's new understanding is that he is not fit to be a leader. His primary concern now is not to hurt anybody. Being nice is his new creed. Uniting people, bringing people together, is what he will try to do. This idea will oversee the action of the novel as the Joads and the other "Okies" migrate from their farmland to the west in search of work, sustenance, settlement, and stability. Along they way they will be confronted with various obstacles, each of which contains a choice between following the "spirit" of the law, as Casy has identified it, and the "letter" of the law, as the world has defined it. The letter is oppressive and legalistic, and indeed haunts Joad after his literal run-in with it. But the spirit is merciful, kind, and giving, as Rose shows when she feeds the old man from her own breast at the end of the novel. Rose's action represents Casy's philosophy that "all men got one big soul ever'body's a part of." The commune that the migrant workers establish is the physical representation of the human spirit that Steinbeck depicts -- a spirit that is marginalized by the evils of capitalism, greed, selfishness, and oppression. Casy may be unable to harness his sinful lust to such an extent that he prefers to overlook the sin and see only the love, but at least he tries to see the love. The capitalistic establishment is the antithesis of Casy's belief system: It is set up to destroy, strip, and discard -- as the corporations do to the farmers in Oklahoma. The migrants are forced, therefore, to transcend the obstacles placed in front of them, to show that there is more in the human spirit (as Casy recognizes) than mere lust for flesh or for profits or for self: There is love of others. If Casy cannot place his love in God, Whom he fails to know, at least he can attempt to give it to others.

The love that Casy describes, however, must contend with the irrational selfishness of the hoarders and wasters, the money men who reap the harvest and then destroy it so as only to drive up prices while the hungry and poor stand by and go unfed. This same system of oppression was what Julia Ward Howe decried in her "Battle Hymn," but the images of the "Battle Hymn" were themselves lifted from the Book of the Apocalypse: "The angel swung his sickle on the earth, gathered its grapes and threw them into the great winepress of God's wrath. They were trampled in the winepress outside the city, and blood flowed out of the press…" (Apocalypse 14:19-20). In Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, the grapes (or oranges) are literally pressed and squeezed into a pulp -- wasted for the sake of driving up the market.

The squeezing of the oranges symbolizes the squeezing of the grapes, referenced by Howe but first described by John the Apostle in Apocalypse. The squeezing of the fruit is like the killing of the people that fruit is meant to feed. The pulp is their blood being squeezed out of them. John in Apocalypse implies that the blood is not wasted but gathered by the avenging angels, who use it to flame God's wrath. Steinbeck draws upon these images and symbols to prophecy a kind of apocalypse, an event in which the oppressors, the hoarders and the wasters will be destroyed for their wickedness. In the novel, he writes: "The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back….And they stand still and…watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage" (Steinbeck 349). The implication is that the people are denied their inheritance -- the fruits of the harvest that they have labored to gather. The restraints placed upon them are being transformed into a wrath that will manifest itself in a violent uprising -- a revolution that will topple and overthrow the regime that oppresses the poor. This appears to be Steinbeck's vision. The very title of his book connects it to the vision of the wrath of God being visited upon a sinful people, and the philosophy of Casy shows that if the human spirit is not fostered with love it will be rise up in wrath. The meaning of "the grapes of wrath," therefore, is found in the suffering and pitiful plight of the Okies: Their suffering is the fruit that will be pulverized and pressed until into a "vintage" that will be heavy and explosive to any system that tries to suppress it. Deliverance comes through selfless love.

Steinbeck's vision of America was of an orphaned people wandering without the shelter of friendship/fulfillment, isolated from life and each other, with only the "grapes of wrath" to keep them going -- that and the naturalistic, humanistic philosophy of Casy, which acknowledges the need for people to love at least one another (if they cannot love God). The recognition of the "great big soul" is what ultimately saves the Joads from being pulverized like the oranges in the novel. Their willingness to give love to the "great big soul," symbolized by Rose in the giving of her breast milk to the dying old man, is the manifestation of Casy's philosophy in action: It is Steinbeck's answer to the "grapes of wrath," the fruit of their long suffering. The communal love that Casy preaches and that Rose exemplifies is the migrant workers' and the Joads' deliverance from the "wrath" to come.

Nina Baym notes that Steinbeck "expresses his sense that America's best times are past and locates value in…socially marginal characters" (1740). This is true in the Grapes of Wrath. The Great Depression acts as the pressing weight of the fruit of American labor. The waste of the workers' labor leads… READ MORE

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