The Grapes of Wrath

The Grapes of Wrath begins with a catastrophe. As described in Chapter 1, a dust storm, the likes of which plagued the American prairies throughout the 1930s, “dug cunningly among the rootlets of the corn” (4), ruining the crop. This meant that the already precarious livelihoods of the farmers were put further at risk. Yet although this calamity was in the immediate moment beyond human control, the response was a catastrophe of human design. This was the eviction of the tenant farmers by the landowners and the replacement of the tenant farmer system, whereby small-scale farmers lived on the land that they worked. This was to be replaced by the consolidation of all land into large plantations. This land would then be farmed by small numbers of wage laborers in tractors, living elsewhere.

This amounted to a second, deeper catastrophe. The tenant farmers would lose both their means of living and their way of life. Further, on a practical level this was not inevitable. It was true that in the short term, consolidating the land and growing a single cash crop like cotton would yield higher profits. However, this must be set against the vast human cost of the evictions, which includes the suffering for thousands of families and the broader social costs of dealing with those homeless and jobless people. There is also an ecological cost. The nameless farmer in Chapter 5 says to the landowner, “[Y]ou’ll kill the land with cotton” (35). The prioritisation of single cash crops will also leach minerals from the earth and render the land unproductive in the long run. It was precisely this kind of short term, profit-driven attitude that contributed to the dust storms in the first place.

The more rational response might be to keep the tenant farmer system but to direct it towards a more sustainable farming model. As Steinbeck’s unnamed farmer says, “If only they could rotate the crops they might pump blood back into the land” (34). Small-scale farmers with a long-term interest in the land’s health, growing a diverse range of crops, could be utilized to overcome the ecological catastrophe of the Dust Bowl. This would be achievable even if it took several years or involved government subsidies. However, the landowners in The Grapes of Wrath do not countenance this. They regard the consolidation of the land and related evictions as a necessity. The reason for this is what they call “the monster” (34). In the landowner’s conversation with the farmer the “monster” serves as the embodiment of the big banks, to which they are beholden. It also functions as a metaphor for the capitalist economic system overall.

As to whether or not this monster requires evictions, on one level the claims of the landowners can be seen merely as a method of evasion. They wish to absolve themselves of responsibility for their actions and convince the farmers to submit. As such, they blame what they are doing on impersonal and inscrutable forces. These powers, they say, can neither be reasoned with nor stopped. At the same time though, there is a certain truth to their arguments. As the owner says, men may have made the monster but “the monster isn’t men” (36). Further, “they can’t control it” (36). The capitalist economic system, once brought into being, possesses a spirit and logic of its own. This is centered on the accumulation and growth of profit. As the owner explains, “When the monster stops growing it dies” (34). Capitalist competition requires firms to get higher and higher levels of profit. They do so to be able to compete with the capital investment, and hence the technological levels and economies of scale, of their competitors. Any firm which does not do this will ultimately go out of business and be swallowed up by its competitors.

Thus, there is a certain inevitability to what unfolds at the start of the novel. This is beyond reason or common sense. It is likewise beyond considerations of morality or human welfare. It is “the monster”: an economic system which compels the big banks to extract maximum short-term profits from their resources. Hence it is also that which compels the landowners, as reliant on the capital of the bank, to extract maximum profit from the land. This is the case even if it does so at the cost of the people there or the land itself. The question raised is whether resistance to this system is possible. As the farmer says, “We all got to figure. There’s some way to stop this. It’s not like lightning or earthquakes” (41). The rest of The Grapes of Wrath is in part an exploration of how this might be done and why, from a human point of view, the author and characters believe it is so essential.