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The Explicator
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Steinbeck's the Grapes of Wrath

a
Rebecca Hinton
a
University of Cincinnati-Clermont College
Published online: 30 Mar 2010.

To cite this article: Rebecca Hinton (1998) Steinbeck's the Grapes of Wrath, The Explicator,
56:2, 101-103, DOI: 10.1080/00144949809595273

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 Steinbeck’s THE GRAPES OF WRATH
John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is a novel of transition. Like
thousands of families in the rural southwest, the Joads leave the land their peo-
ple have farmed for generations and head for California, supposedly a place of
hope and prosperity. Unfortunately, they find only poverty and despair. Former-
ly tenant farmers with relative security and independence, they soon become
migrant laborers at the mercy of the rich, struggling to maintain their pride.
These outer changes accompany a change in the concept of family. Through
the altering perceptions of the representative Joads, Steinbeck implies that in
times of social upheaval, the family cannot remain a self-contained conjugal
unit; it must expand to include members related by plight as well as by blood
and focus on the needs of the many rather than those of the few.
Steinbeck first posits the problem of family in chapter 5, through a dialogue
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between an anonymous tenant farmer and a tractor driver who is plowing the
fields. When the driver boasts that his wages enable him to feed his family
well, the tenant reminds him that because of his wages and the work produc-
ing them, hundreds of other families are denied food and shelter. To this
observation, the driver replies, “Can’t think of that. Got to feed my own kids”
(48). From this man’s viewpoint, the family consists only of the children he
has begotten, and he cares not that in maintaining them at the expense of oth-
ers, he contributes to a growing subculture of poverty and unrest.
The Joads, however, exhibit a more altruistic mentality. By the time they
start for California, they have already added a nonbiological family mem-
ber-Jim Casy, the preacher-although their truck is loaded to its limit. When
Pa queries whether they can afford to carry an extra person, Ma counters with,
“It ain’t kin we? It’s will we?’ (132).
As they travel westward, the family continues to expand and fluctuate. In
chapter 13, for example. they meet the Wilsons, who share in the intimate
family ritual of Grandpa’s burial by supplying a quilt and a piece of paper.
Later, in chapter 20, Ma responds to the hunger of the Hooverville children,
even though her own family has barely enough to eat. Significantly, expan-
sions of the family often follow the demise of a biological member. Grandpa’s
death precipitates the relationship with the Wilsons, and Grandma dies just
before the Joads arrive at the Hooverville camp.
The Joads’ fellow migrants exhibit the same generosity. An example occurs
in chapter 19, when a group of squatters pinch coins from their pockets to
ensure a decent burial for a child who has died of malnutrition (307). In short,
the people on the road realize that in such precarious times, one’s family con-
sists of all those in need.
The Joad family changes not only in its membership, but also in its gov-
ernmental structure. Prior to their exodus, the Joads are patriarchal. When

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 they convene for a family council in chapter 10, the men-the decision mak-
ers-squat in a circle, while each woman stands behind her husband in a sup-
portive role. As the family’s lifestyle changes, however, Ma gradually assumes
leadership. She asserts herself most colorfully when confronting a deputy
with a skillet (chapter 18) and Pa with a jack handle (chapter 16), but she also
exhibits her decisiveness in quieter, less-dramatic ways. It is Ma, for example,
who determines that the starving children must be fed, the scarcity of food
notwithstanding; she who insists that the Joads cannot remain in the govern-
ment camp despite the conveniences (‘‘Well, we can’t eat no toilets,” 45 1); and
she who declares in the final chapter that she will remove her children to high-
er, dry ground even if Pa chooses to remain behind.
Nevertheless, Ma represents the old order of matriarchy, for her primary
concentration is still on the material needs of her own brood. When A1 asks
his mother in chapter 13 whether she is anxious about the future in California,
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Ma replies that she can live only one day at a time, attending to basic and pro-
saic matters:
Up ahead they’s a thousan’ lives we might live, but when it comes, it’ll be
only one. If I go ahead on all of ’em, it’s too much. You [All got to live
ahead ’cause you’re so young, but-it’s just the road goin’ by for me. An’
it’s just how soon they gonna wanta eat some more pork bones. . . . That’s
all I can do. I can’t do no more. And the rest’d get upset if I done any
more’n that. They all depen’ on me jus’ thinkin’ about that. (159)
Through Ma’s oldest daughter, Rose of Sharon, Steinbeck appeals to
young people to step beyond the traditions of their parents and reach out to
meet the demands of a changing society. When the novel begins, Rose of
Sharon seems to be following in Ma’s footsteps, fulfilling the expectations of
her background. Married in her teens to a boy from a neighboring family, she
focuses all her energy on safeguarding her unborn child, fearful lest any emo-
tional shock might harm the fetus. Aside from her family, she seems to have
no interests. As time passes, however, circumstances strip away the comfort-
ing and familiar aspects of Rose of Sharon’s life, forcing her to open her eyes
to the larger world around her. Connie, her husband, deserts her, and the baby
dies. Bereft of husband and child, Rose of Sharon is now called on to extend
her love and nurturing to others in need. She shows her acceptance of this call
in the final chapter by giving the milk in her breasts to a starving stranger.
Her name itself suggests that she (and other young women) are to reach
beyond the conjugal family, regarding all people in need as their children.
(“Rose of Sharon” is a title for Mary, whom Christians revere as the Blessed
Mother.)
The changing concept of family is closely allied to Steinbeck’s allusions to
socialism and unionism, allusions which run throughout the novel. The author
seems to say that disfranchised people such as the new migrants can survive

102
 only by pulling together. assuming authority when necessary, and regarding
each other as kin.

-REBECCA HINTON, University of Cincinnati-Clermont College

WORK CITED
Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of’Wrath. 1939. New York Penguin.

Cullen’s YET DO I MARVEL

Countee Cullen’s best known poem, “Yet Do I Marvel’’ (1925). has been as
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widely misinterpreted as a poem as Cullen has been misunderstood as a poet.

The sonnet seems to many readers and critics no more than the lament of a
defeated soul, a complaint by a man unable to resolve the dilemma of being
black and a poet. A reconsideration of the poem’s structure and logic reveals
that Cullen actually expresses the resolution of a paradox, rather than
bemoaning his fate.
The poem comprises three quatrains and one couplet that mark off four spe-
cific examples of apparent injustice. These serve as preliminary illustrations
of paradox, preceding irony of the climactic couplet:
I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind,
And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
The little buried mole continues blind,
Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,
Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus
Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare
If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus
To struggle up a never-ending stair.
Inscrutable His ways are, and immune
To catechism by a mind too strewn
With petty cares to slightly understand
What awful brain compels His awful hand.
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
To make a poet black, and bid him sing!*
The speaker claims not to understand what appear to be unjust punishments,
although he assumes these apparent injustices are explicable by God.Cullen

*”Yet Do I Marvel” by Countee Cullen from My Soul’s High Song: The Collected
Writings of Countee Cullen, Voice of the Harlem Renaissance. Copyright held by Ida
M. Cullen.

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