The Grapes of Wrath is known as John Steinbeck’s most important work and won him the Pulitzer Prize. The book, which is about the Great Depression that hit the whole world, tells the story of the struggle of people who became poorer and poorer due to the mechanisation of agriculture – hence the capitalistisation – and the subsequent crises, and subsequently lost their farmland and property. In his novel, Steinbeck focuses on one of the many families who flee their homes, tired of poverty and hunger, and reveals the brutality of capitalism through this family.
The misery caused by capitalism and its effects may not be recognised for a long time. After the collapse of feudalism in England, the Industrial Revolution, resulting from the emergence and spread of capitalist relations of production, led to unemployment, homelessness and poverty. Here we see that economists failed to explain the situation correctly, and that everyone came up with temporary solutions to poverty, but no one really realised that this problem was the result of capitalism.
In this way, we can see that literature can perceive and present larger social and public transformations several orders of magnitude better than the social sciences. The Grapes of Wrath is the best example of a novel written during these periods of change, when technology, economy and world politics changed at the same time. In theory, this book, which helps us to visualise the upheaval after the First World War in the best possible way, is quite successful. The book is a clear summary of the United States of America in the 1930s, explaining how the sudden breakthrough of technology changed the world of people who had cultivated the land with human labour all their lives.
1929 Great Depression and the Grapes of Wrath
In order to better understand The Grapes of Wrath, one must first realise that the Great Depression of 1929 was much bigger than the 2008 crisis. Poverty, dreams of class advancement, immigration, xenophobia, the changing social position of the family and women, solidarity, organised struggle, strikes, scabs, police force, the irresistible power of banks and cartelisation are also important themes in the novel. In addition to these, there are also environmental disasters such as drought and endless dust storms.
The Grapes of Wrath tells the story of a family against this economic and social background. The economic and environmental crisis that occurs immediately after the glorious period experienced by the world leads to deflation and prices are driven lower and lower. The fact that these disasters coincide with the spread of capitalist production relations in agriculture turns everything the landowning farmers know upside down, and tractors become widespread, taking away the work of farmers who have used human labour all their lives.
Harvests are scarce, prices are low, so much so that farmers now leave crops lying in the fields and kill their animals instead of feeding them. Farmers who have taken loans from banks and cannot pay them back under the current conditions lose their land. Although they are landless and the only work they know is farming, they cannot work as agricultural labourers because the fields now have only one owner and they would rather drive tractors than work as labourers. The disintegration of agriculture leads people to lose their land completely. In such an atmosphere, people’s only chance is to leave the land where they were born.
The region most affected by the disasters at that time was Oklahoma, and the families here migrated to other countries, especially California. Because in Oklahoma, hundreds of leaflets were dropped from the air about the search for agricultural labourers in California. The main protagonists of our story, the Joad family, whose land was confiscated due to bank debts, had no choice but to emigrate.
As expected, there is no need for hundreds of thousands of labourers, but the family has no idea that hundreds of thousands of families are on their way to California with them. The Joad family, who set out with thirteen people, dreaming of new jobs, new homes, new food and new opportunities, was reduced to seven people at the end of their adventure and completely dispersed. Their adventure ends in a much worse place than where they started, and they are constantly discriminated against because they are immigrants. Their last resort is a barn, and the last source of food they find to avoid starvation is the breast milk of a woman who has just given birth to her baby.
The story contains every tragedy of capitalism that we see now. The tragedy points out that people’s individual struggles against the problems caused by the capitalist system cannot be enough. After leaving their home, the Joad family tries to do whatever work is available, but because there are so many immigrants, they can never find enough work, and the wages they find are too low to sustain their lives.
The story shows the embodiment of Marx’s concept of the reserve army of labour. In order to pay as little as possible, the bosses make hundreds of thousands of families apply for the same job. Of course, there are those who do not accept the low wage, but there is always someone to do the job for that wage, because people are hungry and unemployed.
“He needs maybe 200 people, but he calls 500 people. And they call others. When you go to the workplace, you realise that 1000 people have gathered. Then the guy says: “I’ll give you twenty cents an hour”. Maybe half of them will leave. But there are still 500 people there and they are starving. They’ll work even if you give them rusks. But the guy there has the contract signed for picking peaches or hoeing cotton. Do you understand now? The more men he picks, the hungrier he picks, the less money he pays. Then he wants to take more children, because…” (p. 286).
The only place where the Joad family can actually be comfortable to some extent is the government camp. This camp is a paradise compared to the market economy outside, thanks to the advantages it offers such as shelter and bathrooms. The government camp is a reference to the social democratic policies implemented by Franklin Roosevelt after 1933 in order to provide an exit from the depression, collectively known as the New Deal, consisting of a series of laws and presidential decrees.
The only reason for the 1929 Depression was that liberalism could not be brought under control. Coming out of the depression could only be realised through intervention in the free market like the New Deal. In this respect, the government camp can be characterised as a harbinger of change in America.
The order established after the Industrial Revolution began to crumble as the 20th century began. The organisation of workers and the steps taken by the states, which included more market intervention, accelerated this destruction. Although the 1929 Depression brought the destruction of the liberal global order, the real change could only begin towards the end of the 1930s.
"If we could all unite, they wouldn't put anyone in this position, Tommy." (The Grapes of Wrath, 80)
