Steinbeck's Greatest Work

January 8, 2009

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been reading The Grapes of Wrath. Reading what is probably John Steinbeck’s greatest work, has become a true-to-life example of “unschooling” for both Joe and myself. The story has presented itself as a study primarily on the Dust Bowl years of the Midwest during the Great Depression. Oklahoma was a big part of that, and Joe suggested that his Uncle Forrest (who was born in 1929) might have some stories to tell, whether memories of his own or stories handed down from his parents.

The story has really made me thankful for everything I have. Drought hit the Midwest in the 1930s so the farmers couldn’t grow crops. With nothing to sell they had no money to pay their mortgages, so the banks drove them off their land. They had nothing – no home, little food, and even less dignity.

Rumor was all over that plenty of work was to be found in the orchards and farms of California, so thousands of “Okies” packed up what little they had and headed west. They lived in poorly-maintained migrant camps, found that work was scarce and wages were low, and to add insult to injury the Californians spurned them as being dirty, stupid Okies. People died of starvation and disease. It’s a sad, sad, story, one that happened to thousands of people during the Dust Bowl years.

The Grapes of Wrath is a study of the old Route 66 and the cities it winds through from Oklahoma to California. It’s a study in the geography of the heart of America. It’s a study of life during the Depression. It’s a study of migrant workers in the San Joaquin Valley in California. Joe and I have even studied up on John Steinbeck himself. He was a newspaper reporter who wrote this book based on the many stories being done about the migrants in the 1930s.

The “Okies” as described in the book make me think of the “Mexicans” of today. As a culture we call all illegal Hispanic immigrants “Mexicans” whether or not they are actually from Mexico. We resent their presence in our land. We despise their bringing their ways of life into our country. We hate that they are taking over our schools, our stores, our communities. We hate that they speak their own language instead of learning ours. We label them lazy and dishonest. And maybe most of all, we don’t want them mixing socially among our people.

Some of those stereotypes may be true, for some of the immigrants. For others, maybe not so much.

But it’s easy to see how the Californians must have thought of the migrant workers of the 1930s. The migrants were collectively labeled “Okies” even though over half weren’t even from Oklahoma. And to be called an Okie was not a good thing. It was like being called a n----r or a
f----t today. The Californians despised the Okies and wanted them out of their land. The Okies were just doing the best they could, trying to survive the only way they knew how.