Reference Reviews

Doug’s Student Reference Room

Industrialism in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, edited by Louise Hawker. 179 p. Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press, 2008. ISBN 13: 978-0-7377-4034-9. ISBN 10: 0-7377-4034-5. $24.95.

This volume from the Social Issues in Literature series explores John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” through a variety of perspectives. A succinct and accessible chronology of Steinbeck’s life follows an introduction that provides an overview of the novel and the social context in which it is set. The first chapter’s essays provide background about Steinbeck, highlighting the author’s focus on ordinary people battling forces larger than they are, portraying the time Steinbeck spent working in federal migrant camps in central California, and introducing the author as a writer whose personal observations were informed by the plight of 1930s migrant workers. The section also includes the Nobel committee chairman’s 1962 presentation speech, which praises Steinbeck as a “defender of human values.” The second chapter is the real heart of the book. Each of the ten essays included here, many interspersed with effective excerpts from the novel, focuses on a different aspect of industrialism portrayed in “The Grapes of Wrath.” Not all the essays are entirely sympathetic to the migrant workers’ plight. One essay contends, for example, that Steinbeck’s descriptions of the Okies and their trials were false or greatly exaggerated, influenced by “Marxist-leaning, political and social connections.” A thought-provoking piece details how Steinbeck portrays the weaknesses of both the migrants and the landowners, pointing out the migrants’ culpability for the destruction of the land and themselves. The essayist states that Steinbeck qualifies his “celebrated Jeffersonian agrarianism…by tainting the cropper’s wish: ‘Get enough wars and cotton’ll hit the ceiling,’ the cropper argues.” Another provocative essay asserts that, while Steinbeck tackles the plight of migrant workers in his novel, the author ignores the non-white victims of landowners and industrialists. Further essays discuss the exploitation of agricultural workers, the compromise of personal morality by corporate values, machines as metaphors for human actions, spiritual aspects of the Joads’ journey, and the Okies’ transformation from personal to political struggle. The chapter’s final piece asserts that Steinbeck helped force the issue of homelessness and social welfare into the forefront of public discussion. The third chapter highlights contemporary perspectives on industrialism. The essays here not only help modern readers identify with Steinbeck’s novel, they also serve as a timely and astute reminder that the issues Steinbeck portrays --farm workers’ rights, ethics, industrialism and its impact on farming-- still have considerable significance. The volume’s final two essays, addressing oil shortages and home ownership, provide an excellent springboard to deeper inquiry within and across the curriculum. Highly recommended for high school and community college libraries.
—Doug Achterman