The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
dir. John Ford
It started with the dusters. The candle wax melts over my knuckles as I wander this empty shack. The relentless wind has sanded my home down to a nub, rounded the edges of every plank, shined every window the superintendent hasn’t already smashed. The wind’s always fixing to do something, ain’t it? Even God’s packed up and left this patch of dead dirt behind. Now it’s just us and the tractors. My growling stomach nearly gives us away when the company man goes squatter-hunting. The sign used to say “work will set you free”; now it says “welcome to the desert of the real.” It’s either this or Mr. Sinclair’s jungle; either bloodied hands or a pair of black lungs; either your brains splattered on your own front door or your soul sucked out and sold at the company store. So choose one, Okie. We've got a dollar to make. We've got a country to restore.
To learn American history is to investigate a murder.
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Ruination day
And the sky was red
And I went back to work
And back to bed
And the iceberg broke
And the Okies fled
And the Great Emancipator
Took a bullet in the back of the head…
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Why drive the Cat into your neighbor’s living room? Three dollars a day, that’s why. Take care of your own first, then worry about everyone else—that’s the American ordo amoris. Ain’t no Good Samaritans in these dunes, only Okies, and don’t you give any of them a lift. That kindly wanderer’s liable to be a killer. He’ll slam your door shut and hiss through missing teeth: “Homicide.” That face in your rear-view mirror, that hungry expression in the passenger seat: that’s what the President called “fear itself.” Learned your lesson yet, gramps? This ain’t the era of good feelings. Get your gas and go before this place swallows you whole, bones and all. Get gone.
But California—oh California. She’s waiting for me. This yeller poster here says pickers needed, and we Joads can pick as well as anyone. Ain’t no Cat power in those verdant valleys and picture-perfect rows. Ain’t no gas masks, no headlights searching the dark for native sons, no dusters taller than mountains. Only grapes—entire clutches of fat grapes. Fistfuls of healthy vines, pearls that burst in your mouth and remind you that the Lord is merciful, amen. What if I don’t want to work for others until my shiny callouses split open, Sonya? What if I don’t want to wait until the end of my days for rest, for sweet angelsong and shining jewels? What if I told you we could have all the jewels we want on the other side of the Rockies? Oh Sonya, my heart is bursting. It’s awful. Honey, I need something to drink before I turn to sand. A drop of water, a glass of sodapop, a flask of factory liquor. Hey Rosasharn, got milk?
As the heavenly Father tested Job, he shall test this lonesome Joad. The Almighty shook hands with the Accuser and gambled on a believer’s soul. I know that our God is a bargaining God, and God dammit, I’m all-in. I ain’t bluffing anymore. My American dream sparkles like a Ford fresh off the assembly line. My manifest destiny tastes like Napa Valley ambrosia. It glitters like the gold our grandfathers chased to their graves. My Declaration of Independence smells like the Pacific ocean—my Nation sounds like dynamite—in the Distance—
My America—Explodes—
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Arise ye prisoners of starvation
A better world’s in birth
For justice thunders condemnation
Arise rejected of the earth
It is the final conflict
Let each stand in his place
The International Party
Shall be the human race
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John Steinbeck had to put Tom Joad in prison, because if Tom had spent those four years a free man, nothing would surprise him. Through his time at the penitentiary, Tom becomes a foreigner in the only land he’d ever known, and he can observe the absurdities and crimes of the Depression with fresh, incredulous eyes. We tend to think of past ages as moving much slower than ours; major inventions came decades apart, news traveled at a horse’s gallop and then a steam engine’s chug, wars were named after their excruciating lengths (in the 1300s, One Hundred Years; in the 1760s, Seven Years; by 1967, down to just Six Days). But Tom’s relatively brief sentence is a cruel reminder that even in the silent era, things could move very, very, very quickly. Imagine going to sleep the day before Black Monday and waking up during the Dust Bowl. Imagine watching the end of the world from behind prison bars and wondering if you’ll eat as regularly on the outside as you do inside. Imagine hitchhiking home from the slammer and finding the man who baptized you sitting drunk and filthy under a tree. Tom acts tough at first, but still expects decency; by the end, Tom knows decency is dead, but he’s not acting tough anymore. He believes in people again. He becomes a lantern. He lights the way.
(“In dark times, should the stars also go out?”)
On our dollar bills it is written e pluribus unum, but we should replace that phrase with a more honest Latin slogan: caveat emptor. What better container for my feelings about this nation than a review of Grapes of Wrath? Even the title is a naked metaphor for class consciousness: injustice and inequality will cause the sweet California grapes to rot and ferment into proletariat anger. John Steinbeck steadfastly denied having communist leanings—he even supported the Vietnam War—but if you hold a copy of Grapes of Wrath up to your ear, you will hear it whispering: Workers of the world, unite. I don’t mean that Steinbeck was a latent Marxist or a socialist in denial. I just mean that you don’t need a manifesto to notice the pool of blood you’re standing in. Steinbeck took a conservative turn in his later years, like the John Dos Passos of the West Coast; maybe the hippie zeitgeist of the 1960s proved too much for his, um, old-fashioned sensibilities. (Consider what his ex-wife Gwyn Conger wrote: “Like so many writers, he had several lives, and in each he was spoilt, and in each he felt he was king. . . . From the time John awoke to the time he went to bed, I had to be his slave.” Is this your hero, liberals???) But it’s hard to miss the message when Muley lowers his shotgun and asks the company man, “So who do we shoot?”
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Justice yawned, and her blindfold slipped.
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What a grave sin to deny a man the right to die on his own dirt. Don’t waste prayers on the dead. Say one for the living, the people who don’t know which way to turn. Give them some of your pretty words for a change.
Oh America loves its fallen heroes. It’s the ones still breathing we don’t like. Communist agitators in the Bonus Army’s camp, no doubt about it, socialist union men and Bolshevik sympathizers bivouacked right outside your window, Mr. President, sir, pissing and shitting on the lawn. It’s downright insulting. Send the armor, Mr. President, send the General and his aide, that Ike Eisenhower—now there’s a man who wears the uniform right. Send me, Mr. President. Those motherfuckers think they deserve an early pension, but for what? They’re still here, ain’t they? They ain’t dead. They ain’t made the ultimate sacrifice. By executive order, lock the gates of Valhalla and flatten their tent city under our tank treads. “Boy, what a mess them .45s make.” God bless America. God protect our troops. God save our souls.
The specter of communism haunts the Joads. Tom asks the farmer why everyone’s calling everyone else a “red,” but the farmer declines to answer. It doesn’t matter anyway. Casey’s already showed Tom the truth. “He was like a lantern. He helped me see things too. Like a lantern.” (Remember Sheriff Bell’s dream: “I seen he was carrying fire in a horn the way people used to do, and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. About the color of the moon.” The shining dead, who still light the way. The path illuminated by glowing ghosts.) But Casey ain’t a preacher anymore, so he doesn’t have to forgive. His ghost is a vengeful one. So avenge him, Tom—avenge all of us who’ve died for two-and-half cents—for stale bread and running water—for a million boxes of rotting peaches.
For California.
Ma Joad saw the truth too. “There was a time when we was on the land. There was a boundary to us then. Old folks died off, and little fellas come, and we was always one thing: we was the family.” Ma understands better than anybody that this isn’t Joads against the world, or Okies against cops, or the Sheriff against the Department of Agriculture. No, this is humans against machines. Good against evil. “We’re the people who live. Can’t nobody wipe us out. Can’t nobody lick us. We’ll go on forever, Pa. We’re the people.” Link arms with Ma Joad as the tractors come rolling and ash falls like rain. Pick up your pickaxe and join the ranks, my sister. "Let no machine eat away our dream. / Baby, take my hand, let's go together."
It didn't matter if he won
If he lived, or if he'd run
They changed the way his job was done
Labor costs were high
That new machine was cheap as hell
And only John would work as well
So they left him laying where he fell
The day John Henry died
So don’t ask Tom what’s a red. The only red he knows is men’s blood, and this rich California soil is soaked in it. Why ain’t they more like this camp, government man? I don’t know. You find out, Tom. You find out and let me know why the fuzz keeps burning tents and busting up dances while folks are starving, while good land lays fallow behind barbed wire fences. Listen, Tom, listen: if we all shout at once, if we all roll up our sleeves and refuse to work—if we could just combine our tired voices and speak loud enough that they can hear us all the way in Washington—oh, Tom… maybe then… well, I’m getting ahead of myself. Who’d want to give up their meat on account of some other fellows? Not you, I can see that. Not yet. Go on and unpack. Take yourself a shower. You’re damned filthy.
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As Tom shuts the door behind him, the government man’s smile fades. He regards his desk and his pen and his paperwork. He recalls the wound on Tom's face and sighs.
Trouble ahead. More trouble every day.
But for now, go back to work.
For now, go back to bed.
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Columbia wants me to work
Dixie wants me to die
Uncle Sam wants me to kill a man
America, oh me oh my