The Grapes of Wrath: Discussion IV
Chapters 19-24: Hunger, hot water, and sin
Initial thoughts
Some incredible chapters here. There are so many coalescing and conflicting forces here—economic forces, religious forces, and human forces, the most important of which is hunger, that are driving this whole narrative. It’s hard to see how this doesn’t end in violence. Let’s see how the story develops in chapters 19-24
Chapter 19
This chapter begins with another example of land being taken, California from Mexico, spurred by hungry men. The Americans took the land from the Mexicans because they wanted it more, just as a worker takes 15 cents to another’s 25, because they were driven by that “feral hunger”
Hunger is a central driving device both narratively and dramatically and it’s interesting that how Steinbeck suggests that once man is sated, with food and water and trees, he fails to appreciate it. Man’s hunger for land, for a place to appreciate and to create and grow. ‘They had these things so completely that they did not know about them anymore. To survive.
Hunger seems to be a natural force. Whether its the great campaign to kill the Native Americans, or California and Mexico, or a neighbor plowing his neighbor’s, every one doing so is for the dollar, dollar bill. That’s how they keep us against each other.
The owners manage the land from afar and have no connection to it whatsoever. It’s a business to him, measured in wins and lost. “Crops are reckoned in dollars. (231)” The people who once worked the fields are replaced with roaring machines, and what was once a source of vitality and sustenance and happiness for hundreds of thousands vanishes over night, displaced by a spreadsheet. But where do these people go?
Really liked the contrast between a man whose work once wielded a scythe and stood tall, but when the grain fields were replaced by industry, by “crops to feed the world" (232) ,” the very nature of his labor changed, from one of pride to physical degradation, almost subservience
The “batteries of bookkeepers” keeping track of the owner’s inconceivably large farm sprung to mind a friend of mine whose job is primary bookkeeper for a hedge fund that owns 81 Planet Fitnesses. I would never trash capitalism I mean this is the god damn Great American Book Club, but 81 Planet Fitnesses?
“They wouldn’t know what to do with good wages.” Another fiction, denying the people agency as a means of avoiding accountability—all the people want is food.
Californians want luxury and amusement and social status, Okies want land and food (233)
Really liked the image of a house in Hooverville washed away. A reminder of the dust that drove the family west, and the tractor that tore down their home
Men try to squat on the land but are driven off by cops with gun (Didn’t expect Steinbeck to be such an ACAB guy), one squatter is even shot for living off the land. Like how on the same page, the discussing the shooting and talking about taking land with guns themselves (another assertion of the gun) are described as “squatting”. Nice touch (236)
“How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children?”
Loved the big sweep of history on 238, the thematic heart of the novel which is the heart of history: “when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away.” Mathematics.
Chapter 20
This is checking all the boxes here. Encampments! There has to be a better solution, right?
The Mayor
(244)…Keep us moving so we can’t vote, so we can’t affect change, because we would vote for policies that benefit the people and not the economic system
“On relief”— welfare queen seems to be an old trope
This moment hit hard, when the really finally sets in for Tom: “[He] looked about the grimy tents, the junk equipment, the lumpy mattresses out in the sun (gross), at the blackened holes where the people cooked. He asked quietly, ‘Ain’t they no work?’
The man working on the car, Floyd, spells it out in terms we’ll see again and again, describing how one man, desperate to feed his kids, will take a nickel less for a job. The cherished Handbill was just a ploy in the numbers game, simple mathematics.
“Vagrant found dead.”
“Don’t know nothin’. Don’t understand nothin.”
Tom’s cloth cap, described in beginning as creaseless and clean, is “dirty now, and ruinous.” (249) It symbolizes the hope and freedom of that day and the hardship that has since followed. Tom almost wishes he was back in prison, an unimaginable thought to him earlier in the novel.
When Connie admits to wishing he had studied the tractor, yet another spirit breaks, like Grampa kicking the bucket out the gate and Noah going off to get high in the woods (252). His misgivings lead him to lament that he could have had a nice $3 a day job, but was misled by dreams of living in a home and studying radio. He believed in opportunity, and all the encampment is the embodiment of destitution.
Floyd calls out the scammers who have come to scam workers with shady contracts. Floyd is the rare man who speaks out and endangers himself by doing so. When the officer steps out of the car to confront him we see again the twisted, mutually beneficial marriage of corporate interests and the law. (263)
Here is the first time we see “red” used (a reference to the Bolsheviks, which you probably knew, just making sure), wielded against someone not agitating but simply advocating for basic decency and fairness. It’s an old, old playbook.
The cops don’t care about the woman who was shot but honestly felt a bit on the nose to me like yeah we get it haha
Casy repays his debt by sacrificing himself, Christlike, for the crimes of another and finally absolving himself of the sins of creeping on the church girls. I don’t have a super in depth read on Casy’s arc. He’s connected with sin and repression as are others, but what is his journey saying?
The sheriff is profiting directly from prisoners, too, getting 75 cents for each prisoner, profiting off them. The Okies and their ilk are not just repressed but commodified (271).
Uncle John taking two dollars for whiskey pissed me off like I get we get it dude but come on. Woe is me.
Based on Tom’s conversation with his mother about how he will react to getting accosted by a deputy, I have a feeling he is going to snap and end up back in jail. I hope I’m wrong. Maybe he will rise above. He has so far. I hope I’m wrong.
Chapter 21
“There senses were still sharp to the ridiculousness of industrial life.” (282) I liked this description here of industry as something unnatural, and how these machines push people out who “swarm” across the land like insects
Liked the tidbit of Okies being “sexual maniacs” — yet another timeless trope
“Men who had never been hungry saw the eyes of the hungry” and this creates panic, because this man wants something more than you and is willing to do anything to get it, and that is a threat to your way of life, and it is a fight you will always lose until you yourself acquire that hunger.
This fear, rooted in man’s own need to feed his family, leads the locals to develop a “mold of cruelty” (283), to pick up guns, to live in fear, in his own way too a victim of the tractor
“And money that might have gone to wages went for gas, for guns, for agents and spies, for blacklists, for drilling.” The powers-that-be would rather spend their money repressing their workers than respecting them. Why? Is that just the way of the Monster?
Chapter 22
The Weedpath camp is a bit of a jarring change from the first encampment. It has running hot water, bathrooms, and the people elect their leaders. It’s a democratic haven, run with dignity in mind, not profit. And it’s probably too good to be true.
Liked this bit on page 287 about the preachers who stopped coming around when they were allowed into the camp but not allowed to collect. Steinbeck’s critique of of religion will only become stronger in the current pages. Is the church just another monster, another vehicle for exploitation?
“Why ain’t their more places like this?” Tom asks, when he finds out about the dance. Dancing and music go hand in hand with community, and are powerful tools for bringing the people together.
I was heartbroken on page 289 by Tom exciting his mom by refusing to tell her about the dance nights: “Suddenly she seemed girlish.” So simple, but so effective, in showing us a side of Ma that we thought long ago lost. She still has joy, she still has hope, even after the hardship. We see this even more later as she runs around like crazy upon hearing that the committee will visit. She has hope again, because she he found decency.
When Tom goes with Timothy and Wilkie, the encounter with their employer could have taken place today. The employer, himself owned by the bank, is forced to reduce the wages of the men even though he believes they are worth thirty cents. He admits the very same Farmers Association to which he belongs, owned by the bank, sent the men who burned the encampment the previous night. The movement against the Okies appears to not be solely the product of social and economic forces but active conspiracy from the bank, the farmers and the state. It runs deep.
“Agitators” (295) again just being people who espouse basic rights. The control of language is something to note here, along with “red.” How it distorts man’s intent and twists it into something dangerous
“They’re scairt we’ll organize, I guess,” says Timothy. “…if we can gove’n ourselves, maybe we’ll do other things.” This is a perfect book for the The Great American Book Club because it repeatedly strikes at the very heart of democracy: the power of the people, strength in unity, dignity in self-government. The camp is a microcosm, one the outside world is intent on crushing, but the camp is one lone outpost for a movement of peoples who could wield true political and economic power if they only realized they all just wanted food for their children, food that the Monster is gobbling up
But they might break, instead, in an angry, desperate way, like Tom with a knife in his gut, grabbing the shovel and smashing over the head his former neighbor, or they down break, sobbing. Something is going to break here and it is going to be violent
Really liked this moment on page 300, where Ruthie proudly relays the news of Tom’s job to Ma. That her mom went to expecting the worst and ready to smack her to hugging her was a surprising display of emotion and vulnerability for Ma that was nice to see
The kids not understanding the flushing toilet was just a flawless move. Funny and revealing.
Ma is moved to tears by the genuine kindness of the camp manager
Rose and Ma washing seems to represent revitalization, hope. The ability to wash one’s body allows them to reclaim pride and self-respect and to simply feel good. I really need to wash my face every night
The religious woman who harasses Rose about dancing and sinning and “skinnying out” is chilling. She is yet another example of a system that prays on the vulnerable, a system that seeks to control by repressing human expression and connection. That she seeks out a pregnant woman and tells her she will lose her baby for “hug-dancing” is all the more twisted. Women being shamed for sex, yet another old trope. Religious dogma makes sense for those at the top, but what does this woman have to gain from shaming Rose so viciously? Is salvation her version of $3 a day for driving a tractor? Is she too just making a calculation?
The religious woman and the corporations are separate institutions, yet they both attack dance. Why?
Hidden in the woman’s rant is the true statement of the book when she talks about the manager who told her “Says the sin is bein’ hungry. Says the sin is bein’ cold.” And that’s the whole counter thrust of book.
Loved how Steinbeck ended the first encounter: “And she strode away titanicaly, and her eyes shone with virtue.” (310) Too good.
Ma has just been great this whole chapter. She’s willing to beat the crazy lady’s ass when she gets back, which I would have loved to have seen (also an example of violence as the only recourse to zealotry). But she also provides some great comfort to Rose, who is now terrified of losing her baby as some form of divine judgment. Ma tells her, “ You ain’t big enough or mean enough to worry God much.”
Somebody is stealing toilet paper. This book is timeless!
This was an easy joke but I did think somebody was actually hoarding it, not that it was being used by a single sick family. Makes it all feel a bit realer, knowing this entire family had the shits so bad the whole unit realized something was up. That they were given a credit at the store shows further the enlightened attitudes of the community
Ruthie got absolutely dismantled on page 318. The way the children mirrored the grownups, taking away the power of an aggressor through solidarity and collection action, was cold-blooded
Ma’s speech on page 323 really grounds the whole chapter, one in which the vibes were high (aside from crazy religious lady). She reflects on the people they lost along the way. Even if they find work, that sadness and loss will remain.
Chapter 23
Stories emerge here as another form of community and shared meaning
The Injun in the story was “naked as the sun,” seems to be even more connected with the earth. This is further illustrated by his comparison, once shot, to a cock pheasant, “stiff and beautiful…somepin better’n you” (326)
Pretty sympathetic portrait by old Johnny on page 327 about getting wasted, and I get it. “Everything’s holy—everything, even me.” That’s real. I just wish I could still handle the hangovers.
The harmonica and the guitar and the fiddle—further development of music as a unifying, life-sustaining force, a great driver of culture and meaning
Great bit about the Texas boy and Cherokee girl. Their moment together was everything that the outside world has tried to suppress: dance, joy, lust. That the girl’s dad watches his daughter steal away into the field and shrugs is the biggest fuck you ever to the crazy lady and everything she believes in. The father gets it, and so does his daughter (329)
Beautifully ironic description of the baptism on page 330. The way he juxtaposes fear and terror and discomfort with salvation and sin is gloriously cheeky.
Chapter 24
The men want to defend themselves from the instigators without violence because they know violence will bring more violence upon them. But is this possible?
In this chapter we hear a similar explanation to why the local cops want to bust up the government camps, but the logic is laid bare. “Give people hot water, and they gonna want hot water. Give ‘em flush toilets, an’ they gonna want ‘em.” How can anyone fault anybody else for having such needs? You can’t. That’s why the cops detach themselves: the camps hold red meetings and they are all trying to get on relief.
To question other forms of charity, like government subsidies, is to stir up trouble, to be red, and to be thrown behind bars
Page 334, on the government camp: This here’s United States, not California. This suggests that the current state of California is fundamentally different than the United States, that their values are somehow incongruent. Why is California not the United States? How did it become that way? In seeking freedom in their vast country these people found themselves aliens in it, not protected by the law or nor nourished pursuit of property promised them.
The Okie enrolled in school suggests that even when given “equal opportunity,” underprivileged children often still encounter barriers that are pretty much insurmountable. How does a child who goes to school with no shoes, whose called “Okie,” and who fights every day, learn? He doesn’t.
Pa’s increasing desperation shows in his conversation with Black Hat. He acknowledges that he would take Black Hat’s job for less money: “I can’t starv so’s you can get two bits.” Black Hat points out he will just take his job again for less. It’s a cycle, but how does it stop?
The guys who get caught busting up the dance admit “a fella got to eat.” These men are willing to help destroy an entire community of poor people for their own survival. They’re still treated with respect when caught, with a desire to understand. They’re let off with a warning—but the threat of violence is there (344)
The chapter ends with Black Hat recommending the men go turkey shooting like the rubber workers in Ohio, what amounts to a show of force. The men squatting in a circle, still unable to find work, still with hungry children, seem inclined to agree. Yeah, I think this is going to end badly.
That’s all I got for tonight. Again please comment on any and all of these points or drop your own observations. I know I missed a ton. This is just the stuff that has resonated most with me. Thanks again to all of you who have been reading along. For Tuesday, 2/25, let’s finish this baby.
Side note: The poll for our second read will go live this weekend! Stay tuned.