Honors Novel #2: The Wrapes of Grath

The Great Depression was a bleak era, as one could glean from the title. The economy was in the toilet, the people were left penniless, and everything was just terrible in general. Even the ones who made an effort to escape the fate of dying poor and depressed ended up in worse situations than the ones they left behind. Migrant farmers had their houses foreclosed and were forced to move cross-country to live in conditions that were more horrendous than living on the streets. Enter the life of the Joad family, main protagonists of John Steinbeck’s classic The Grapes of Wrath. In the novel, Steinbeck tries to convey the pure agony migrant farmers in the 1930’s had to endure, and uses quite a bit of metaphors to do so.

Now, many people in many humanities classes around the world have criticized the novel for having too much description of little, seemingly pointless things that come in the form of anecdotes and are sandwiched between chapters of the “story” (certain people debate whether this book actually contains any story at all). However, these little anecdotes advance the plot in a way no other simple narration could. Instead of simply having one follow the Joad family around for 400 pages, Steinbeck allows the reader to see a bigger picture by giving us a zoomed-out look at the 1930’s. It’s an effective way to lay out a story and make the pure, unadulterated struggle of the migrants come fully into light.

Then there’s the story aspect. Some have said that the story is unbelievable and overly exaggerated, and while this may be true, it serves merely as a way to get the full message across. This book is almost satirical in the sense that absolutely nothing goes right. At one moment, the family experiences joy and the reader thinks things are finally looking up. But, turn the page and then all of those high hopes are dashed to the ground like plates on a table that’s been tipped on its side. The Grapes of Wrath is not a happy novel; in fact it’s just the opposite. It seems as though the reader could not fully know the true plight of the characers in the novel if there was hope and joy. The Great Depression was, as stated above, a bleak era, nearly devoid of these small pleasures.

That’s where the connection lies. Where the story is very much exaggerated and seems to repel—no, entirely reject the reader, there are small pockets of air where one can catch his breath. These are the anecdotes. In the great sea of depression that is this novel, the moments that bring it back down to earth are located between the sections of story. Without those, the novel would be almost too much to bear, as tidal waves of struggle and pain continuously bowl the reader over, allowing him no time to recover. The anecdotes provide the figurative lifejacket, even if it is small. They keep the story grounded and allow the reader to understand what was truly happening in the era, before going on to read about the exaggerated life of the Joads.

Yes, the Great Depression was an incredibly bleak era, and this novel captures the very essence of that bleakness. But, without its small, easily forgotten unsung heroes, this novel would not contain as much power as it currently does. The connection between the anecdotes and the story is, at times, unclear, but the anecdotes are definitely necessary. Without them the story would simply be a string of terrible situations that just continued on and on until one very strange and beautiful (or repulsive) ending.