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Contemporary American Theatre Company and Department of History
at The Ohio State University Present The “Actors’ Book” and Stage
Notes for
CATCO’s production of Frank Galati’s
Adaptation of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath
-Spring 2001 Written by Bill Childs Web Design by Sharan
Majmudar The Department of History at The Ohio State
University is proud to host and support these web pages for CATCO’s
production of The Grapes of
Wrath. Outreach to the community is an important element of Ohio
State’s mission and of the Department of History’s effort to bring the
power of history into the public debate. We wish CATCO success in this
production. David Staley,
Director of the Goldberg Teaching Center Department of History, The Ohio State
University CATCO is very grateful to the Department of History for the opportunity to share with Central Ohio--and via the web, the world--insights into the process of "putting on a show." For every production, CATCO hires a dramaturg to collect information about the play (its structure and setting), the playwright, and past productions. This information, which is put together into an “Actors’ Book,” aids the director in establishing an approach and it helps the actors prepare for their different characterizations. It is supplemental information that furnishes facts and context, for the director(s), actors, properties master, music director, and costume, scenic, lighting, and sound designers, always do their own research as well. The key word is “collaboration”; everyone collaborates and shares information with everyone else The dramaturg
prepares not only the Actors’
Book, but also Stage Notes,
which is a shorter published version of the Actors’ Book. This publication is made available
to high school students and, sometimes, the subscribers. For the production of The Grapes of Wrath, this web site
is taking the place of Stage
Notes. This web site will be
updated periodically throughout the rehearsal
process. Bill Childs, Associate Professor of
History and Dramaturg The
Political-Economic Context Cultural
Transformations New Deal and the
Common Man Critics of the New
Deal History Structure, Meanings,
and Influences Is the novel
true? Dust
Bowl Agriculture in
California Migrant
Patterns Migrant
Life The Adaptor: Frank
Galati Production
History Critics’
Views Other Productions by
Frank Galati CATCO’s
Approach to the Production Selected
References/Suggestions for Reading The historian Alan
Brinkley (in a review of Steppenwolf’s New York production) has written
this about The Grapes of
Wrath: “... Steinbeck’s
novel is more than an intriguing period piece. Despite its many flaws it speaks
to modern audiences, as it did to audiences in the 1930’s, by evoking one
of America’s most powerful and cherished images of itself. It suggests that running like a
river beneath the surface of the nation’s cold, hard, individualistic
culture lies the spirit of Ma Joad, a spirit of ‘fambly’ and community
that, once tapped, might redeem us all.” (“Why Steinbeck’s Okies Speak to
Us Today,” New York Times, 18
March 1990, Arts & Leisure section, p. 13). The novel that had challenged a
nation’s soul late in the Depression decade still resonates in American
hearts and minds over a half century later. CATCO put together
the following overviews, analyses, and references to help the actors,
technicians, and audience more fully appreciate CATCO’s production of
Frank Galati’s adaptation of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. We look first at the nature of
American culture in the 1930s and how John Steinbeck and the documentary
tradition interacted with that culture. Then we present a brief biography
of John Steinbeck, a discussion of the novel’s history and structure, and
analyses of the novel’s relation to history, particularly the Dust Bowl,
migrant patterns, and migrant life.
A brief section on the film follows. A longer section on Steppenwolf’s
adaptation includes discussion of Frank Galati, the production’s
development, a brief synopsis of the adaptation, critics’ views, and a
list of other productions by Galati.
There will follow a section on how CATCO decided to approach the
production. Finally, sections
on what happened to the Okies and migrants in Ohio in the 1930s precede
the final section, a list of references and suggestions for further
research. All of this
information is intended to present a glimpse into the creative process and
to enrich the audience members’ experience of one of America’s most
significant play adaptations. In hindsight, the
strong and sharply divided reaction to the publication of The Grapes of Wrath in 1939, and
to the film adaptation in 1940, is not surprising. Steinbeck’s artistic achievement
tapped into and embodied some significant cultural transformations that
had been occurring in the United States for over a generation. The novel also joined a plethora
of criticisms of the changing political economy. And it challenged some American
beliefs and new cultural trends as well as reaffirmed long-held American
values. The
Political-Economic Context Historians who study
the Great Depression, alas, do not agree on what caused the horrendous
economic downturn, which affected most of the world. Some emphasize monetary policy
(the increase or decrease in the money supply); others suggest that a
major change in the structure of the economy brought on the downturn
(similar to recent debates about “old” and “new” economies). Generally speaking, however, we
can point to some significant facts and trends. By the late 1920s, Americans were
producing more industrial and agricultural goods than they were
consuming. By 1933, one out
of four Americans who wanted to work could not find jobs; “service”
enterprises like fast foods, laundries, and motels did not constitute a
significant portion of the economy to which the unemployed could
retreat. Throughout America,
“Hoovervilles” sprung up in urban and rural areas. Named after President Herbert
Hoover, who many blamed for the downturn, these shanty towns constructed
of plyboard and cardboard housed many of the unemployed. Many of these turned their pants
pockets inside-out, which were in turn called “Hoover flags.”
While there was lots
of political conflict across the land, and some localized violence
here-and-there (labor-management conflicts, farmers fighting sheriffs who
were selling neighbors’ farms, California farmers mistreating migrants),
the fact remains that Americans’ responses to the Great Depression did not
include widespread violence and attempts to overthrow the government. Instead, Americans hotly debated
the issues and competed in the political arena to have the right to
determine appropriate responses.
For example, thousands of unemployed veterans congregated in
Washington, D.C., in the spring of 1932 to demand that the government give
them the bonus Congress had authorized for them to receive in their old
age (in the 1940s). President
Hoover ordered the protesters removed in a peaceful manner, but
unfortunately, the officer in charge, Douglas MacArthur, exceeded his
orders and many of the Bonus Army were injured. President Franklin D. Roosevelt,
who took office in March 1933, did not agree with the veterans either, but
he treated them more humanely than had his predecessor’s
administration. Beginning in
March 1933, and employing many of Hoover’s ideas, Roosevelt and the
Democratic Party worked hard to stem the economic downturn. Their efforts over the next six or
so years boosted the American spirit and strengthened the Democratic
Party, but their so-called “New Deal” never did bring about economic
recovery; only mobilization for World War II brought back full
employment. Nonetheless, we must
remember that if one-in-four were jobless, three-in-four had jobs (by the
late 1930s, unemployment remained at a high 17 percent). Many workers took pay cuts
(President Roosevelt ordered a 10 percent pay cut for Federal workers
shortly after taking office in March 1933), and many others were
underemployed, but they held jobs.
While the Joad family lumbered across the desert in search of work,
others motored across that same desert to enjoy family vacations in
California and other areas of the American Southwest. (My maternal grandfather, for
example, was a government employee at the San Diego Navy Yard and he began
a rather expensive hobby around 1936--home movie production). For the majority of Americans, the
Great Depression was an inconvenience that occasioned lots of fear--would
they be next to lose their jobs? would the government be up to the task of
preventing revolution?--but it was not the experience for them that it was
for those like the Joads, who we shall learn below, represented a very
small percentage of the American population. The plight of the
unemployed not only attracted the attention of the New Dealers, but it
also joined with other cultural transformations to focus the majority of
Americans’ attention on something they had not seen much of before: the marginal or common man in
society. This discovery had
profound implications for the culture and the politics of the American
nation and set the stage for stormy reactions to the publication of The Grapes of
Wrath. Cultural Transformations Americans had
discovered “culture” in the 1920s, and by the Depression decade, the
attempt to define “the American way of life” in cultural terms was well
underway. Several forces
introduced Americans to the concept of culture. America’s growing prominence in
the world arena, the emergence of the social sciences, particularly
anthropology, the spread of new media (photographs, film, radio, mass
circulation magazines like Time
and Life), and the resurgence
of an old medium (books! for Americans began to read more non-fiction than
fiction in the 1930s) prompted Americans to look at themselves in ways
that they had never done before.
Two anthropological works, Stuart Chase’s Mexico: A Study of Two Americas (1931)
and Ruth Benedict’s Patterns of
Culture (1934) strongly influenced American views towards
culture. So too did
historical romance novels, with Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind (1936) leading
the way, introduce Americans to other ways of life (in Mitchell’s case,
the American South, which even today remains somewhat mysterious to many
Americans). In the words of
American cultural historian Warren I. Susman, Americans began ... thinking in terms of patterns of behavior and belief, values and life-styles, symbols and meanings. It was during this period that we find, for the first time, frequent reference to an ‘American Way of Life.’ The phrase ‘The American Dream’ came into common use; it meant something shared collectively by all Americans; yet something different than the vision of an American Mission, the function of the organized nation itself. (Culture as History, 154) In one sense, Americans were trying to define their civilization in relation to the other great civilizations of history. And, rather than reject the “marginal man” in their midst, Americans began to incorporate him--and her--into their cultural definition of “American.” Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath tapped both an
old and new sense of being American.
As Susman has argued, “it is a novel of the enforced wanderings of
marginal men with a difference, in fact with several crucial
differences. Marginal man
here was not alone; the strength and power of the family as a unit went
with him. ... he shared with
other travelers ... common purpose ... destiny.” (170-171) Indeed, while American artists in
the 1920s and 1930s (John Dos Passos, Steinbeck, photographers) focused on
the “marginal” or “common man,” they did so for an audience that
represented the majority of Americans--the middle class. And Americans embraced the “folk”
American in mythic terms, identified with the “folk” as part of the
American tradition. This
sense of many different kinds of Americans belonging together was very
strong by the 1930s. The diversity theme
emerging in the 1930s was found also in the nation’s music. “Folk” music became especially
important, but other musical styles co-evolved with folk music, including
country swing, jazz (which some see as the indigenous music of the U.S.),
big band, and blues. For the
migrants in California who played music, “The minstrel stage, tin pan
alley, early country, and cowboy music were all popular music sources that
fed the performers’ repertoires.”
[http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/afctshtml/tsme.html] The migrants
liked especially the Carter Family, Jimmy Rodgers, and Gene Autry. The migrants’ music--that which
they listened to and that which they created--included themes of hardship
and disappointment and the desire to return
home. New
Deal and the Common Man Political change
underscored the cultural change.
The Franklin Roosevelt-led New Deal Democrats, which took over the
reins of government from the Republicans, who had maintained for a
generation control of the government, utilized the mass media to promote
their politics and American values, including belief in the “common man”
and the power of technology to solve any social problems. For example, they hired the
balladeer Woodie Guthrie to write songs that reflected the “common man” in
America and how the common man contributed to the strength of the
nation. Later in the decade,
government agents fanned out across the land to record the folk music of
America. And they influenced
Hollywood and even hired filmmakers to produce films touting the American
way of life. New Deal Democrats
also constructed institutions intended to structurally change the
political economy in order to combat the Depression and prevent another
one from occurring. The New Deal did not bring the economy
out of the Depression; only mobilization for World War II did
that. Nonetheless, the
New Deal Democrats were successful in three areas. First, the various relief programs
lifted the spirits of the American people simply by showing them that
someone cared. Second, they
reformed the political economy so that another great depression would not
occur. They established a
plethora of “alphabet agencies” to regulate particular sectors of the
economy (banking, stock market, transportation, agriculture, etc.). Third, the New
Dealers mixed their economic programs with cultural ones that focused on
the “common man.” For
example, the Works Progress Administration (1935ff) included not only
relief and work-relief programs for the unemployed laborer, but also
cultural programs (a theatre project, Post Office murals, jobs for
writers, etc.) for unemployed artists. The New Deal included the
Resettlement Administration (RA, 1935-1937) and then the Farm Security
Administration (FSA, 1937ff) to help displaced farmers deal with the
economic changes that so concerned Steinbeck. But the RA and FSA ran into
cultural traditions (which Steinbeck alludes to) that made it difficult
for the reformers to convince those being reformed to follow the new
cultural values. Coupled with
the political thrust of New Deal initiatives, these institutions
underscored the American quest for cultural definition and led to
Americans discovering that their culture, their civilization, was very
different from others. In the 1930s,
Americans discovered the heritage not only of the various ethnicities of
the European immigrants who had helped America industrialize, but also of
Native Americans and, more slowly, (prompted in part by the New
Deal-inspired WPA State Guidebooks) that of African Americans (who became
by 1936 an important part of the New Deal Democrat coalition). Marginal or minority groups now
mattered (Hispanics and Asians were still excluded), not only at the
ballot box (which the Democrats exploited well), but also in the culture
at large; strength through diversity, reflected in the Democratic Party’s
majority, was becoming a recognized American cultural trait. If the New Deal programs did not
bring about economic recovery, they did help Americans see themselves as
made up of diverse peoples. Critics
of the New Deal Not all Americans
supported the New Deal programs. For some, the
Democrats were doing too much to alter the economy and help the common
man. In 1934, with executives
of key corporations in the lead, the Liberty League began a campaign that
painted the New Deal as worse than fascism or communism. For the most part, the Liberty
League did not matter all that much until later in the decade, when more
conservatives (Democrats from the South and Republicans) began to fight
the perceived nationalization of politics that they alleged the New
Dealers had created.
(Actually, most of the major New Deal laws and agencies included a
role for the states; Roosevelt, for the most part--the Court Packing
scheme was an exception--promoted “federalism,” not
nationalization.) Most critics of
Roosevelt and the New Deal, however, argued that the New Deal was not
doing enough to help the common man deal with the economic
depression. These critics
mattered much more than the Liberty League, and they pressed President
Roosevelt to expand the Federal government more than he wanted to. These “critics on the left”
included Senator Huey Long (D-La) and Father Charles E. Coughlin, and, in
Steinbeck’s California, Francis E. Townsend and Upton Sinclair. Huey Long (who President Roosevelt
once labeled one of the two most dangerous men in America), promoted his
own political fortunes through the “Share Our Wealth” program. Long, who as governor of Louisiana
in the 1920s had elevated that state’s infrastructure (schools, highways)
to aid all citizens of the state, argued that the government should make
sure that every American had a middle class life. To do this, he advocated
liquidating all personal fortunes over $3 million dollars and distributing
that money to all Americans.
Father Charles E. Coughlin, the “radio priest” from Michigan,
exhorted millions of Americans to demand social justice for all and less
power for the private sector banks and corporations. While initially drawing from the
Catholic Church’s long tradition of promoting social justice, Coughlin
eventually turned to anti-Semitism to promote his political agendas. Finally, in 1942, the Church
ordered him to cease his political activities, and he did. Significantly, both Long and
Coughlin tended to attract members of the middle class--those who had not
succumbed to the ravages of the Depression but who feared that they might
one day be out of a job.
(These were Steinbeck’s audience as
well.) California in the
1930s seemed especially affected by political movements. Francis Townsend was different
from Long and Coughlin in that he concentrated on one interest group--the
elderly--and proposed a plan to help them and the nation’s economy. While overly expensive and perhaps
too bureaucratically complex to administer, his plan (each person over 65
was to be given $200 a month on two conditions--they quit their jobs and
spend every penny of the monthly stipend) held some merit with millions of
Americans. A more modest New
Deal program, the Social Security Act of 1935, rendered Townsend’s
political movement moot.
Upton Sinclair, on the other hand, focused his energies on
eliminating all poverty in the state. Persuaded to change his party
affiliation from Socialist to Democrat, Sinclair ran for governor of
California in 1934. He
established EPIC--End Poverty in California--as his basic platform. It directly challenged the
capitalistic, private property basis of the state’s economy: The state would take over idle
factories and fields and allow the unemployed to produce their own food
and goods for their own use.
Sinclair and his followers, in effect, were saying that Roosevelt’s
New Deal had simply not gone far enough. Having won the Democratic primary
handily, Sinclair faced in the general election a well-orchestrated
campaign of distortions, lies, and dirty tricks, funded by California
conservative business leaders and supported by Hollywood studios and
actors. The old economic
system endured in California. In sum, then, The Grapes of Wrath appeared at a
time in which Americans were receptive to stories of “other cultures” and
particularly attracted to the “common man”; many were fearful that they,
too, might succumb to the economic changes occurring; many were suspicious
of the large-scale corporations that had funded the Liberty League and the
attack on Upton Sinclair; and, a majority of Americans voting in the 1934
and 1936 elections demanded that the Federal government do more than it
had been for the down and out among them. Steinbeck’s novel
also reflected another cultural movement in the U.S. that did much to
focus Americans on the common man. The Documentary Movement
in the 1930s Steinbeck had
intended the novel to “document” the plight of American migrants. He saw himself--and in fact he
was--part of the documentary movement of the 1930s. The documentary approach began in
the mid-to-late nineteenth century in England; in the U.S., it was Jacob
Riis, with his publication of How
the Other Half Lives (1903) who publicized the style in America. The muckrakers, such as Upton
Sinclair, who published The
Jungle in 1906, are also ancestors of the 1930s documentary
style. In one ironic sense,
The Grapes of Wrath grew out of
Steinbeck’s failure to follow this tradition: He had intended to publish a story
with photos of migrant life in California for Life magazine; but, to him, the
facts he uncovered and the events he had experienced could not be
adequately conveyed in a text-photo journalism style; it required a long
novel. But as many have
noted, the novel included many elements of the documentary
style. What is the
documentary style? Many in
the 1930s saw the documentary as “propaganda,” which in a sense it was,
for it advocated a particular view of a particular situation. But the movement was more
complicated than that; it included a sense that “art” was a legitimate
vehicle for exposing the problems of the times. As William Stott points out in his
book, Documentary Expression in
Thirties America, “documentary,” “[L]ike ‘document,’ from which it
derives, ... has two meanings,
... These meanings are not
mutually exclusive ... The first ... has been defined as ‘presenting facts
objectively and without editorializing and inserting fictional matter,
....’” (5-6) A second kind of
document, the “human document,” is not objective but personal. “... a human document carries and
communicates feeling, the raw material of drama. Such a document gives some
information that would be found in an impersonal document.” (7) “We understand a historical
document intellectually, but we understand a human document
emotionally. In the second
kind of document, as in documentary and the thirties’ documentary movement
as a whole, feeling comes first.” (8) Stott points out that
Warren Susman “affirmed that ‘the whole idea of documentary--not with
words alone but with sight and sound--makes it possible to see, know, and
feel the details of life, to feel oneself part of some other’s
experience.’ [Susman implied
that] one knows another’s life because one feels it; one is informed--one
sees it--through one’s feelings.
The practitioners of the documentary genre in the thirties
realized, if dimly, the same thing:
emotion counted more than fact.” (8-9) Clearly, with his focus on the
Joad family, Steinbeck employs “a human document”; but, in the intercalary
chapters, Steinbeck also employed facts about the economy and the migrants
that he had gathered during the decade. Pare Lorentz, who was
a friend of Steinbeck’s, and who hired Steinbeck to work on some of his
films, reigns as the most important documentary filmmaker of the
period. Yet, some do not
agree with that assessment; instead, they argue that Lorentz was a
propagandist because he worked for the New Deal administration. His most famous productions (The River and The Plow That Broke the Plains,
both produced in 1936 under the auspices of the RA) included both facts
and emotions; but they also included--against Lorentz’ request--sections
that praised the New Deal programs designed to attack the consequences of
the Depression. Another form of
documentary prominent in the 1930s, which drew from the legacy of Jacob
Riis, was the photograph-text book.
Many photographers, many employed by New Deal agencies, made their
artistic reputations chronicling the common man in America. They included women (Dorothea
Lange, Margaret Bourke-White) and men (James Agee and Walker Evans, of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,
1941). John Steinbeck was of these cultural forces, if not
always in
them.
Born in 1902, John Steinbeck remained in the Salinas Valley area of
California until he went to Stanford in 1919, where he took writing
courses. Exhibiting a
tendency to fall behind in his studies, Steinbeck did not graduate. The Monterey peninsula was his
favorite community, and from his experiences there, he wrote much of his
best work. He left California
for the first time at age 25, when he went to New York City as a
journalist and sometime laborer.
He returned to California, working for awhile as a caretaker of a
Lake Tahoe estate, and in 1929, published his first novel, Cup of Gold. Two novels and short story writing
barely sustained him until his first major success in 1935, the
publication of Tortilla
Flat. During the late
1930s, Steinbeck focused on California’s white laboring class, publishing
In Dubious Battle (1936), Of Mice and Men (1937), and The Grapes of Wrath (1939), which
won in 1940 both a Pulitzer Prize and the Award of the American
Booksellers Association, which is now called the National Book Award. He entered the filmmaking business
(The Forgotten Village, 1941)
and supported the war effort as a journalist and author (Bombs Away, 1942). Although his literary
reputation waned somewhat after 1939, Steinbeck continued to publish
regularly, even as he traveled widely around the world (he returned to
California only occasionally in the 1940s): Cannery Row (1945), The Wayward Bus (1947), The Pearl (1947), A Russian Journal (1948), Burning Bright (1950), The Log from the Sea of Cortez
(1951), and East of Eden
(1952). In the 1950s, New
York and Sag Harbor became the home of Steinbeck and his third wife,
Elaine, a native of Texas, until his death in 1968. His Travels with Charley in Search of
America (1962) revealed a man somewhat unsettled with the changes
occurring in America, particularly the loss of community that he had grown
up with in Monterey. In 1962,
Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize.
He died in 1968, within a year of returning from a trip to Vietnam
(which President Lyndon B. Johnson had asked him to
make). John Steinbeck had
many friends, some of them rather prominent in artistic circles. Indeed, his friends and the strain
of buying a new ranch house interfered with his writing Grapes of Wrath between June and
October 1938. Visitors
included Lorentz and Charles Chaplin. His first wife, Carol, was his
sounding board; he trusted her judgment implicitly and completely. He also had a good relationship
with his editor and publisher (helping the latter out of bankruptcy when
he agreed to go to Viking Press, but only if his old publisher was given a
job). Two
important individuals who influenced Steinbeck in the 1930s were Pare
Lorentz, noted above, and Tom Collins, manager of a government migrant
camp. It was from Collins
that Steinbeck received--even while he was writing the novel--important
gritty details of the migrant camp
experience. Tom Collins, manager of Kern migrant camp talking with drought refugee and her four sons. California. Lange,
Dorothea, photographer. 1936 Nov. Steinbeck believed in the migrants. He saw them as the future of
California: “The Californian
doesn’t know what he does want.
The Oklahoman knows just exactly what he wants. He wants a piece of land. And he goes after it and gets
it.” And, “Their coming here
now is going to change things almost as much as did the coming of the
first American settlers.” [quoted in DeMott, Working Days, from Louis Walther,
“Oklahomans Steinbeck’s Theme,” San
Jose Mercury Herald, 8 January 1938] While he was embarrassed by the
treatment they received and worried that the failure to change the
circumstances would undermine California’s economy, he also saw in the
migrants themselves a resoluteness that would eventually save
California. Steinbeck
consistently refused to go beyond the book to promote actively the
migrants’ cause. He was not
“political” in the sense that he leant his name to various causes or even
led rallies (one exception was the “Steinbeck Committee,” which supported
strikers, but Steinbeck himself did not actively promote this
organization). Steinbeck did
offer a solution to the migrant problem in California: The state should establish a
Migrant Labor Board, which would regulate the number of migrants, oversee
the camps, and during the off-season provide the migrants some land on
which they could grow their own vegetables. Hardly a radical plan, it
reflected Steinbeck’s basic conservatism: He believed in the migrants, but
he also believed in “America.”
He understood that the economic changes occurring meant that the
large-scale corporations were not going to go away and that ways must be
found to make the corporation act more morally. The novel implies that the
strength of family and communities coming together (“I to we”) might work,
but there is no real conviction behind it. History The publication of Grapes of Wrath in 1939 created,
as Steinbeck predicted, a firestorm of controversy. Several cities in the U.S. banned
the book because the sexual content and “leftist” views offended some
citizens. The novel sold more
copies than any other contemporary work, except Gone with the Wind (it was a best
seller in Oklahoma).
Politicians in California and Oklahoma criticized Steinbeck’s
emotionalism, charged him with misrepresenting the facts, and accused him
of supporting “anti-American” values. Others praised Steinbeck for being
the conscience of America.
Certainly, for its content and style and for the responses it
elicited, The Grapes of Wrath
must be considered as one of the most important works in all of American
literature. Indeed, this novel
represented Steinbeck’s third attempt to write the story of the
migrants in Depression America.
In Dubious Battle (1936)
dealt with striking California migrant farm workers, but it cynically
concluded that communist leaders organized only to serve the party, not
oppressed individuals, and that individuals were incapable of organizing
collectively against oppression.
The next effort Steinbeck burned: L’Affaire Lettuceberg, in his own
words, was a “mean, nasty book.”
But writing it allowed Steinbeck to get the hate out of his system
so that he could produce the masterpiece. The Grapes of Wrath represented Steinbeck’s final effort to explore
the reasons behind and the possible responses to the failure of American
society that the plight of the migrants reflected. That the migrants existed at all
in a country based on the worship of and the achievements in material
progress framed the story in terms of failure. There was a loss of spirit or
hollowness in the plight of the Joads (‘that’s not supposed to happen in
America’). Steinbeck wondered
if the Joads--and the American people--could rise to the
challenge. The novel had an
important impact on other social commentators. Dorothea Lange, infamous
photographer for the Farm Security Administration, had traveled about the
South, Southwest, and California documenting life of America’s poor even
before the novel was published.
After Steinbeck’s masterpiece came out, she went looking for
migrants who reflected the Joads and she found them. Perhaps her most famous photo,
“Migrant Mother,” was in fact one of half a dozen photos she took of the
same woman; the two of them experimented until they got the “look” that
each wanted; emotion more than fact or reality ruled Lange’s
photography. Structure, Meanings,
and Influences Good fiction
fractures reality and puts it back together in such a way as to lead the
reader to a comprehension of central truths and realities that were hidden
from everyday life. Three perspectives
frame the novel: the economic (agriculture,
technology, banks, management/labor); the social (how individuals
behave alone and in groups; how they respond or not to change); and, the philosophical (and/or
religious; how Steinbeck relates human experience to the larger natural
view of the world). While
through each of these perspectives universal truths and realities are
revealed, the American setting of the novel reveals as well
specific American truths and realities. The novel is broken
into three chronological narratives:
(1)
Chapters 1 - 11 focus on the land, the drought and dust, and why
the Joads left; (2)
Chapters 12 - 18 present the migration or exodus of the Joad family
to the promised land of California; (3)
Chapters 19-30 present the sojourn in California, Jim Casy’s death
and Tom Joad’s decision to carry on his fight, and Rose of Sharon’s
unselfish act. Steinbeck
interspersed intercalary (interconnecting) chapters (a technique he
borrowed from John Dos Passos, who had great success with his USA trilogy in the 1920s and
1930s). These “generalist”
chapters offered the reader the broader story within which the Joad
family’s saga took place. Steinbeck’s novel clearly reflects religious inspirations and other American cultural themes and myths. The Joads represent the chosen people, the Iraelites, Americans. The preacher, Jim Casy, just like Jesus Christ (both have the same initials), wanders for awhile, thinking, and rejects old religion for a new one; sacrifices himself for others unselfishly; tells his murderers they know not what they are doing; inspires others (Tom) to carry on the fight. Rose of Sharon’s unselfish act at the end of the story represents the resurrection of Christ. The Bible contains numerous references to “grapes” and “wrath.” In Numbers 13:23, grapes represent abundance; in Deuteronomy 32:32, grapes represent wrath and vengeance. And, of course, Julia Ward Howe’s song, “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” relates to Revelation 14:19--”the great winepress of the wrath of God.” The phrase in the song, “Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,” clearly is reflected in the last scene of the novel, if one sees the serpent as big business agriculture/capitalism, which had manipulated the Joads, the starving man and boy, and all migrants. Fittingly, perhaps, it was Steinbeck’s wife Carol who came up with the title, after hearing the song.
Steinbeck re the title: "...I like it better all the time. I think
it is Carol's best title so far. I like it because it is a march and
this book is a kind of march--because ot is in our own revolutionary
tradition..." (Working Days, p. 169). The novel reflects
many American traits as well, although the way Steinbeck portrays them,
they too are about morality and the spiritual. The plight of the Joads represents
the loss of Jeffersonian values of attachment to the land, small-scale
farming, individualism, and freedom.
Absentee landowners led to erosion of morality (tractors tearing
down homes); loss of land led to human erosion (the Joad family breaks
up). Steinbeck’s progressive,
liberal politics (not communism, which he detested) infuse the novel: Large-scale institutions (the
Shawnee Land and Cattle Company, the banks, the California Farmers’
Association) oppress the people; the people themselves hold the key to
change, but not through individualism or self-reliance; only by banding
together can they throw off the oppressive institutions (the smooth
operation of the Weedpatch Government camp operations shows this very
clearly). Steinbeck was not
calling for outright revolution, but rather for enlightened responses to
the problems. This
“progressive” or “liberal” politics, which emerged at the end of the 19th
century and the beginning of the 20th century and was exemplified on the
national level by President Theodore Roosevelt, held within it a message
to the wealthy: Reform the
unintended and unwanted consequences of industrial capitalism or face more
radical upheavals within society.
First Jim Casy, then Tom Joad becomes the messenger; by rallying
others to organize, they will raise their voices to a volume that will
demand a respons. Steinbeck on Tom: “... Tom - half bitterness, half humane. ... Escapes in the
night. Hunted, hunted. Over the last pages Tom hangs like
a spirit around the camp.” (Entry #87, Working
Days). While Tom is clearly
an important character (and the essence of the novel’s main thrust for
adapter Frank Galati), Ma Joad is arguably as important a character. Steinbeck was very interested in
the evolutionary change from matriarchal to patriarchal societies, as
outlined by anthropologist Robert Briffault in The Mothers: The Matriarchal Theory of Social
Origins (New York, 1931).
Steinbeck, according to his wife Carol, created Ma from Briffault’s
ideas. In the matriarchal
society, the sense of belonging to a group revolved around the woman; her
brothers often performed the duties that in later patriarchal societies
the husband and father did.
Equality and egalitarianism marked matriarchal societies. Because women worked hard at
various domestic labors (which included directing the economic pursuits of
the household industries such as tanning, potting, building the home, and
tool-making), they achieved status and influence within the clan. With the rise of industrialism,
however, and an attendant emphasis on sexual relations, men gained power
and established patriarchies.
Economic wealth, based on individualism and land ownership,
overtook the more communal approach of matriarchal
societies. But Steinbeck shows
(through the characters of Grandpa and Pa Joad particularly) that the
patriarchal society, based as it was on independence, individualism, and
land owning, was no longer capable of surviving within the emerging 20th
century economy. Beliefs in
individualism and private property had blinded the men to the fact that
large scale corporations held an economic advantage over the individual
farm owner. Perhaps, Steinbeck suggests
through the character of Ma Joad, a return to a matriarchal society was
what Americans needed to do in order to respond to the economic situation
of the 1930s. Thus, Ma Joad’s
matriarchal society dovetails with the insights of Jim Casy (“I to we”) to
suggest that the solution to the problems of the migrants rested, at least
in part, on the migrants joining together to more effectively react to the
new economic realities. It is
Ma’s influence on Tom, as much as Jim Casy’s influence, that forces Tom to
trade-in his male-oriented individualism for a more matriarchal emphasis
on working together. Adding
to the dramatic tension, moreover, is the insight that Ma herself does not
understand how she has influenced Tom; her focus is on her family, while
her example has shown Tom that a larger family--the migrant
workers--should be his
focus. Steinbeck on Ma: “And I want to build her up as
much as possible. Her
possibility of an organized society.
I want to show how valuable Ma is to society--what a waste there
is.” (Entry #68,
Working Days) “Today Ma meets the ladies committee and it must
have some charm. It
must. It can’t flop because
here is the great contrast.
Here is the tremendous contrast. It must be charming.” [Entry #69,
Working
Days] One other theme is
noteworthy (indeed, it caused much criticism): Steinbeck constantly put the Joads
and the larger story within a larger natural world. The sexual antics of Granpa, the
turtle (which does not appear in the play), the land itself--all of these
indicates Steinbeck’s belief that humans were only part of a larger
universe; their actions--like farming the Great Plains--had consequences
elsewhere in the natural world, just like the actions of uncaring
large-scale corporations had consequences on families and
individuals. Is the novel “true”? Within two months of
the novel’s publication, Marshal V. Hartsanft published Grapes of Gladness: California’s Refreshing and
Inspiring Answers to John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. In this rejoinder, a migrant
family is welcomed with open arms to California. In Thormis Miron, The Truth About John Steinbeck and the
Migrants (1939), the author posed as a migrant, averaged $4 per day,
and was asked by the growers to stay on. Steinbeck knew these sorts of
attacks were forthcoming; but his own experiences gave him the strength to
move forward. On the other
hand, investigators for Darrell Zanuck, who produced the John Ford film of
the novel, found conditions to be worse than Steinbeck had
depicted. To appreciate how
true the novel was, we need to understand the relationships between
history and fiction, the facts behind the Dust Bowl and agriculture in
California, the migration patterns of Southwesterners over time, and
migrant life. Generally
speaking, the last half of the novel, the scenes in California, is more
accurate than the first half; but a certain authenticity still pervades
the entire novel. The work is fiction,
not history, in the sense that the characters are not “real,” nor are the
various stories factually true.
But Steinbeck did not create the characters and the plot lines
solely from his imagination.
He drew from his experiences while traveling in Oklahoma and along
Route 66, but mostly from living in California. As noted above, the government
agent, Tom Collins, sent Steinbeck statistics from the camp he
superintended. But Steinbeck
also experienced the migrant camps firsthand (living and working in one
for several weeks) and was repulsed by what he discovered. In fact, the last scenes
representing the flood reflected real events that Steinbeck witnessed in
February 1938 in Visalia and Nipomo, California; arguably, this horrific
reality was the final push that enabled Steinbeck to produce the
masterpiece he had been trying to create for several
years. Steinbeck did not
attempt to be evenhanded and he made some small mistakes. He focused narrowly on agriculture
and left out other contemporary aspects of the Bear Flag State, such as
its tremendous urban growth, especially in the southern half of the state,
and the fact that Mexican and Asian migrants also lived in
California. (Indeed, the
Mexicans and Asian migrants, who had been there first, gave way before the
quarter million or so “Okies” who trekked to California in the late
1930s. Once mobilization for
war stimulated the economy, however, California growers petitioned the
government to bring back the Mexican migrants.) Some errors do appear in the
novel. Sallisaw, Oklahoma, is
located near the Arkansas border, nearly 400 miles to the east of where
the Dust Bowl actually was, and it lay in a grape growing region. Large corporate farms existed in
California in the 1930s, but had not yet overtaken the Sooner
state. Nonetheless,
mechanization of agriculture, particularly cotton production, had advanced
the most in the area of the Dust Bowl; 40 percent of the farmers, like the
Joads, were tenants. Most of
the so-called Okies did not leave because of the dust, but rather because
they had long since lost the ability to make a living off the land. They--not the corporate farms--had
worn out the land.
(Ironically, New Deal agricultural programs pushed even more tenant
farmers off the land: In an
attempt to control production, the government paid farmers not to plant;
landowners took the tenant farmers’ lands out of production, told them to
leave, received money from the government for doing so, and continued to
farm their own land.) The Dust Bowl
Abandoned farm in the dust bowl area. Oklahoma. Rothstein, Arthur, 1915- photographer. 1936 Apr. COLLECTION: Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection REPOSITORY: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, DC 20540 USA
The drought of the 1930s began early in the decade in the East--Maryland
and Virginia. By 1931,
portions of Montana and the Dakotas had been hit hard. The drought then spread from the
east in a band southwest to Missouri and Arkansas and continued westward
throughout the decade. In
1934, the financial loss attributed to the drought equaled one-half the
cost of U.S. participation in World War I. By the mid-1930s, the southern
plains were the most severely hit; the rains did not return there until
1941. May of 1934 saw the
worst of the dust storms--350 million tons of dirt in the air, with 12
million tons falling on Chicago.
“Blackouts” lasted from one hour to three and one-half days; one
could not see one’s hands in front of him during the worst of these
storms. Inhabitants suffered
from “dust pneumonia” and other respiratory infections. Houses could not be kept clean;
the dust came in through the smallest of
cracks. The Dust Bowl
consisted of 100 million acres, 500 miles North to South, 300 miles East
to West, and covering land in western Kansas, the panhandle of Oklahoma,
two-thirds of the Texas Panhandle, northeast New Mexico, and southeast
Colorado. The Dust Bowl
existed because human intervention (Muley: “We never should have broke her
up”) exacerbated natural cycles of drought. In the area of the Dust Bowl,
mechanization of cotton production had advanced further than anywhere else
in the Plains states. Less
than one-half of the land was owned by residents of the state; 40 percent
of the farmers were tenants or share
croppers. Agriculture in California While technology
exacerbated the effects of the drought in the 1930s, technology made
possible the development of the lush valleys and fruit groves in
California. Water--and the
transportation of water--dominated California agriculture. Dams on rivers, especially the
Colorado River, enabled Californians to capture water; irrigation ditches
and canals enabled the farmers to transport that water to their
farms. Such technology (which
in hindsight probably did more ecological damage than was necessary) was
expensive. And California had
higher taxes than other farming states. Thus, high costs of operations
dominated agriculture in California.
High costs can be mitigated through combining operations and that
is exactly what happened in California. Ten percent of the farms produced
over 50 percent of the crops.
This concentrated power in the hands of a few. The large-scale farmers controlled
the California Farmers Association; small-scale farmers discovered that it
was prudent to follow the dictates of the Association. Another problem faced the
farmers: Somewhere in the
neighborhood of 175,000 workers were needed at the peak of the harvest
season in California, but most of these were not needed during the rest of
the year. Coupled with the
influx of migrants from the Southwest, these facts established the
conflicts between the workers and the land owners that Steinbeck portrays
in his novel. Migration
Patterns Steinbeck’s story of
the Joads’ exodus from Oklahoma contains some truth. But, unstated in the novel is the
fact that farmers and others had been leaving Oklahoma, Arkansas, and
Texas since World War I, and continued to leave during the 1940s; the Dust
Bowl did not create a sudden exit from the area. For example, as many
Southwesterners travelled to California in the 1920s (when rainfall was
plentiful) as migrated during the dirty thirties, when drought supposedly
drove off the Joads (about 250,000).
Twice as many Southwestern
migrants, or nearly one-half million, went to California in the 1940s,
when the economy was much better in the plains states than it had been in
the 1930s. Thus, Steinbeck’s
emphasis on the drought, while partially correct (indeed, the migrants of
the 1930s were slightly more poor than the migrants of the 1920s because
the drought had made them more destitute), is also not totally
accurate. Most migrants from
the Southwest in the 1930s, moreover, did not travel very far at all; most
moved only to the next town or next county. Between 1935 and 1940, Oklahoma
lost 309,000 migrants; 142,000 did not go far (no farther than contiguous
states); 167,000 traveled farther, but not all of those went to
California. Other factors pulled
the Okies to California in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. The pull factors were strong and
long in the making.
California had begun in the 1920s to advertise its many
attributes--jobs, beautiful scenery, chances to start anew, and,
significantly, a mecca for vacationing Americans. California agriculture needed
workers in the 1920s; farmers often paid migrants’ railway fares to lure
them west. And, as with all
migrating populations in American history, many returned home and extolled
the virtues of their new land.
In fact, farmers did not make up a majority of migrants to
California in the 1930s. Only
43 percent were farmers, with 21 percent being white-collar/professionals,
14 percent unskilled/domestic laborers, 13 percent semi-skilled/service
workers, and 8 percent proprietors or professionals. Thus, Connie and Rose of Sharon’s
dreams represented the majority of the migrants’
dreams. Given that the novel
was very much a “road novel,” were its depictions accurate? The Joads appear to have been
rather slow travelers, taking several months to make the trek of 1,200
miles. Migrants who traveled
to California took much less time to do so than did the Joads. The average length of a trip from
Oklahoma to California, with a decent car, was only three or four
days. In addition, the Joads
did not represent a typical migrant family. The average Southwestern migrant
family consisted of 4.4 members.
The Joads did not reflect the average ages of migrants,
either. Out of the twelve
people in the Joad family, five were over 40. But 60 percent of most migrants
were under 35. Although Steinbeck did not include in the novel allusions to other groups of migrants, he was well aware of the history of migration in America and in California. The history of California’s importation and
treatment of foreign labor is a disgraceful picture of greed and
cruelty. [The Chinese were
followed by the Japanese, Mexicans, and
Filipinos.] Foreign labor is on the wane in California, and
the future farm workers are to be white and American. This fact must be recognized and a
rearrangement of the attitude toward and treatment of migrant labor must
be achieved. (Harvest Gypsies, pp. 52,
57). Migratory families at 7 a.m. near
Imperial Valley, California. Migrant Life If one has read the
novel and done some research on the lives of migrants in America, one is
struck by how accurate Steinbeck’s depictions really are (surely a
tribute, in part, to his use of Tom Collins’ information). [For an accessible internet site
at the Library of Congress, see Selected References/Suggestions for
Further Reading.]
Migrants’ lives were ones of constant travel, for they needed to
look for work and often drive some distance to the work that they
found. Not surprisingly,
information gathered by government researchers in the late 1930s and early
1940s reveal a complex community.
Some migrants had succumbed to the hazards and travails of the road
and lost much of their dignity.
Many did not. These
insisted on staying clean, when possible, and wearing clean clothes when
engaging in various recreational activities, such as singing, playing
music, and dancing.
Californians, however, who had already established a legally-based
segregated world separating Anglos from Asians, and who also discriminated
against Hispanics and African Americans, tended to segregate themselves
from the Okies; one movie theater sign instructed, “Negroes and Okies
upstairs.”
Many of the Okies
were extremely religious--holy rollers and Pentecostals particularly. While Steinbeck saw the Okies as
being very strong and determined and, indeed, the hope for California’s
future, he could not abide their religious fervor. In fact, this religious fervor
conflicted with the Democratic Party ideologies behind New Deal programs,
especially in the government migrant camps. Thus you have the scene at
Weedpatch (Elizabeth Sandry character). There is in an historical sense,
then, a direct thread from the Okies back to the Second Ku Klux Klan of
the 1920s (Oklahoma’s government was heavily influenced by the Klan in the
early-to-mid 1920s) and forward to the Far Right movement of present
days. Their religion enabled
them to put one foot in front of the other and to focus intently on the
task at hand--getting work.
In brief
summary: The novel reflects
some of the history of the
1930s; other than a few errors in the Oklahoma section, Steinbeck reveals
much truth in his novel, especially in California. He omits, however, much truth as
well (where are African Americans?
Hispanics? They, too,
were members of the migrant movement but they are not depicted in the
novel). Both John Steinbeck and John Ford fell within the emerging documentary tradition of the 1930s, but each chose to employ documentarian approaches in different directions. Steinbeck chose to place the Joads within a penetrating vision of a larger family of humans, indeed within the larger natural world that humans shared with the land, vegetation, and animals. John Ford chose to narrow the documentary vision to emphasize the Joad family; in so doing, he left out the larger connections between the Joads and the land and the Joads and society. Ford also encouraged the actors to overdramatize the words, which made them less plausible as real, everyday people. A rather haphazard movie studio system lay behind the production of the film, which explains in part the poor results. (That same system, or course, accidentally produced the contemporary classic Casablanca). Despite the media and Hollywood attention given the film, it is a poor substitute for the novel or even Galati’s adaptation. Frank Galati’s work
has usually focused on the visual, and often included music; his Grapes of Wrath is no
exception. In any play
adaptation of a novel, the adaptor must make choices; not all material and
themes can be replicated on the stage; yet, the adapter should stay true
to the author’s intentions.
Most critics believe Galati did this. He chose to fuse the scenes in
Oklahoma and on Route 66 into Act I; all of Act II occurs in California;
this division reflects Steinbeck’ choices in structuring the novel. While he underplays the theme of
the land in Act I, Galati does emphasize the various people the Joads
encountered (although not all of them) and other themes from the novel
(individualism, community).
He does so through dialogue and music; the latter conveys themes
underplayed in the dialogue and often compresses several themes
together. The Adaptor: Frank Galati
At the center of his
vision were the elements fire, water and rain,” which together “offered
both symbolic and architectural symmetry.” His dramaturgical solution to the
interchapters was to create musical interludes; Galati “wrote” the lyrics,
and Michael Smith created the music. Galati’s principle
arch was straightforward:
“Tom is the hero, and the result of the conflict is Tom’s
revelation of Casy’s gospel or message. This is offered to Tom in the very
first scene of the novel, but Tom doesn’t get it until he makes his last
appearance in the story. The
catalyst is Casy’s death--that’s the crisis, and it leads inexorably to
Tom’s revelation. So, I
started there.” “The locations of the fire and water traps and the limited range of motion of the Joad’s truck pre-ordained the placement of many key scenes. Moving on a track, the truck could pivot on its own axis | |||||
Frank Galati first thought about
adapting The Grapes of Wrath to
the stage in the 1970s.