john steinbeck's novel the grapes of wrath

What Steinbeck really accomplished in The Grapes of Wrath was not political or literary but cultural: he opened the eyes of the educated middle class to the terrible deprivation and pain being suffered by the migrants, and helped create a climate of sympathy and concern for them. The book did win a Pulitzer Prize, which gave it a certain establishmentarian imprimatur, but the truth, however little it may appeal to sentimentalists, is that the Okies were saved not by Steinbeck but by the economic recovery brought about by the Second World War though efforts were made to curb the powers of the California farm cartel, there is evidence enough in the continuing struggle of migrant workers - not Okies, now, but Mexicans - that its back hardly has been broken. Indeed, it has become American mythology that enthusiasm for The Grapes of Wrath and its message of working-class solidarity was so great that Washington was mobilized on behalf of the migrants - that it became, as the cliche' has it, 'a book that made a difference.' But much though one might wish this to be so, it is not. Steinbeck was a writer of limited technical skills but a large, kind heart, and he made his most dramatic expression of his benevolent vision of the human community in this novel, which appeared at just the moment when popular faith in the country's capacity to recover from the Depression was at low ebb his passionate plea for the displaced Okie farmworkers fell on receptive ears, and readers responded with an ardor not dissimilar to Steinbeck's own. DeMott observes, immediately after making his sweeping claim for the book, that 'it is one of those novels with its heart in the right place.' This is true, and it is for this reason rather than for any literary qualities - which, alas, in truth are slender - that The Grapes of Wrath is widely loved even now, long after the immediate social and political issues that inspired it have been, if not wholly resolved, much ameliorated. In that time, Robert DeMott writes in his introduction to Working Days, 'the novel has sold more than 14 million copies (it still sells over 100,000 paperback copies a year), has been translated into nearly every language on earth, and has become an accepted masterpiece of world literature.' But DeMott is stronger on facts than literary judgments the huge popular success of The Grapes of Wrath is indisputable but, as a golden anniversary rereading makes plain, its literary reputation is considerably more problematical. $18.95 IT IS fully half a century since John Steinbeck's massive and hugely influential novel about migrant workers of the Depression, The Grapes of Wrath, first appeared. $25 WORKING DAYS: The Journals of 'The Grapes of Wrath' By John Steinbeck Edited by Robert DeMott Viking. THE GRAPES OF WRATH Fiftieth Anniversary Edition By John Steinbeck Viking.

John steinbeck's novel the grapes of wrath