Both John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Nathaniel West’s The Day of the Locust undertake the task of exposing the harsh reality of the California dream during the Great Depression. While the Joad family in Steinbeck’s novel dream of finding a new life as farmers in the Central Valley, the characters in West’s novel seek their fortune among the glitter of Hollywood. And while the events of both books occur just miles apart, Steinbeck and West expose in different ways that the California dream can be a harsh and illusive fantasy.
The significant theme in The Grapes of Wrath is a great American theme: people like the Joads and other migrants moving west to find a better life. The promise of the California dream guides the Joads to California from Oklahoma. Ironically, the same dream that drove their forebears across the Atlantic and across the continent to settle Oklahoma. The difference is that now the Joads are forced west like the Indians, their ancestors forcefully drove west from the land. Still, the Joads were hopeful because “the Central Valley lures the migrants westward from Oklahoma and the entire Dust Bowl region with the dream of the Promised Land.” (Owens 129).
But the Joads are used as an example of the cruel reality of History. The Joad family believes that they can quench the thirst of the dust drought by moving west.
“It is the weltering pattern of American history laid bare: drive the Indians and serpent from the Promised Land only to discover that the Garden must lie yet further to the west.” (Owens 133) As Owen states, Steinbeck aligns the migrants deeply with American history. Throughout the novel the Joad family claim that their fathers had to “kill the Indians and drive them away” and “Grandpa killed Indians, Pa killed snakes for the land.” (Steinbeck 34) We should recognize the reality that many Indians were killed and the land was taken over. Now once again as the cycle continues, the land is taken by the banks (the migrants’ own people) and the sins of their fathers are now visited upon them.
Under the strain of The Great Depression the family unit moves westward and “as the family’s fortunes decline the family morale declines too.” (Fontenrose 75) While the dream of a better life cleanses the fear of the reality of the move West, each family member is tested by that reality as “all of them were caught in something larger than themselves” (Steinbeck 31)
Ma Joad is the heart and soul of the family. She represents the true meaning of love. She leads through her feminine but hardened strength. A wife and mother whose only purpose in life is to be a farming housewife, she is fierce while taking on masculine traits, as she’s forced to hold her family together during their hardships. During this era the men were the leaders of the family. But the power dynamic of the Joad family changes as their character strengths and weaknesses are challenged. Ma Joad becomes the leader of the family. She is furious during the trip when it is suggested that the family break up for a while so Tom, the son could stay behind and fix another family’s car. ‘You done this ‘thought thinkin’ much. What we got left ‘in the world’? Nothin’ but us. Nothin’ but the folks…An’ now, right off, you wanna bust up the folks’ (Steinbeck 218). Ma Joad “was the power. She had taken control” (Steinbeck 218). She was the glue that stuck the family together during such an important time in their lives. Her plea is heeded and the family stays together. ‘We’re a-goin”…I don’ care what the pay is. We’re a-goin” (Steinbeck 451), she says, and in acts such as these she becomes the leader of her family.
Humbled in the circumstances at hand, pride overtakes her husband, Pa Joad. His rants, “ ‘Seems like times is changed. Time was when a man said what we’d do. Seems like women is tellin’ now’ “ (Steinbeck 453) However he relents and gives up his role as head of the family.
Grandpa and Grandma Joad are pillars of wisdom in the Joad family. Grandpa doesn’t want to go to California and when the family makes final preparations to go, he is forced to leave his lifetime home by being drugged with medicine from his own family. He knows that the reality of California dreams are not what the promise offers. He meets his death on the road to California. His fears are realized when he is buried away from his life long home. “The attempt to remove Grandpa by force from his native land kills him, and California is not a Promised Land but a man-blighted Eden.” (Crockett 108)
Grandma Joad dies in the process of moving to California as well. She is the second family member to die during the westward move, finally killing off the ancestral roots bound to Oklahoma. Her character isn’t as strong as grandpa’s but her death is certainly more dramatic. Grandma Joad dies in the truck while the family arrives in California. Steinbeck uses her death to symbolize what has been lost.
Tom Joad was sent to jail for four years for killing a man in self-defense. Now on parole he wants a fresh new start with his family. He gives a promise that there will be no more killing, that in California he will have a new life. Once he convinced his ma that it was the best decision to go along with the family, he gets himself into trouble once he’s there. His friend Jim Casy, a former preacher leads strikers in protest against the low wages given for fruit picking. Tom witnessed the murder of his friend when a group of prejudiced neighbors argued against Casy’s remarks about the starving children. Casy told them ‘You fellas don’ know what you’re doin’. You’re helpin’ to starve kids’ “ (Steinbeck 495). A man reacted by striking Casy in the head with a club and killing him. Tom’s reality of his promise he gave his ma changed. “They killed ‘him. Busted his head. I was standin’ there. I went nuts. Grabbed the pick handle…I--I clubbed a guy’” (Steinbeck 500). Although Tom ‘s intentions were to start a new life he continued his former cycle of fighting for survival.
The younger siblings, Ruthie, 12 and Winfield, 10, keep the story fresh but never innocent. “Ruthie and Winfield came out of their bed like hermit crabs from shells. For a moment they were careful; they watched to see whether they were still criminals. When no one noticed them, they grew bold. Ruthie hopped all the way to the door and back on one foot without touching the wall.” (Steinbeck 424) Finally towards the end of the story the children, like the adults, form like succumb to the realistic events surrounding the reality of the poisoned dream. ”Ruthie and Winfield tried to play for a while, and then they too relapsed into sullen inactivity, and the rain drummed down on the roof.” (Steinbeck 436)
Rose of Sharon is the pregnant daughter in the Joad family. After her 19-year-old husband Connie leaves her with the reality of raising a baby alone, fear haunts her during the trip West. She feels she deserves the wrath of God upon her. This is expressed when a crazy lady antagonizes Rose of Sharon at camp. “The devil was jus’ a-struttin’ through this here camp.” (Steinbeck 309) Ma Joad comforts her crying daughter by telling her “You aint big enough or mean enough to worry God much.” (Steinbeck 312) But the comfort Ma Joad gave wasn’t enough to save Rose of Sharon’s baby. The Joads face the sadness of disposing of three dead family members, finding that the California dream is not one without wrath. But obstacles to human survival unveil the intense force of the spirit. After having her stillborn child Rose of Sharon offers nourishment of her breast milk to save a starving man in a barn. “Ma knows what must be done, but the decision is Rosa Sharon’s: ‘Ma’s eyes passed Rose of Sharon’s eyes, and then came back to them. And the two women looked deep into each other. The girl’s breath came short and gasping. “She said, ‘yes.” (Shockley 94) This display of the human spirit’s generosity in the face of catastrophe and broken promises outweighs the crushing reality of hopeless lives. This single instance of charity highlights larger Christian themes in Steinbeck’s novel.
Christian symbolism is prominent throughout the novel. “The title phrase “Grapes of Wrath” is a good case in point… it is a direct Christian allusion, suggesting the glory of the coming of the Lord, revealing that the story exists in Christian context, indicating that we should expect to find some Christian meaning. (Carlson 98)
The title of The Grapes of Wrath is used in the text of the book as well. " And in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage"(Steinbeck 449). Several Biblical parallels are valid. “The Old Testament imagery is obvious enough. The Exodus, the wandering in the desert, the promised land, the title, and the very ring and roll of the language ally this novel with the story of the great primitive migration of the chosen people.” (Dougherty 115) As the Joads begin to approach California “A rattlesnake crawled across the road and Tom hit it and broke it and left it squirming” (Steinbeck 238). This may be a sign that the adversarial trek is now over and that now a new life with less hardship may start. “Jesus, are we gonna start clean!” (Steinbeck 238) It appears that this is a chance to be reborn and start again. This is illusive. There is danger in the American dream.
Steinbeck’s writing style presents the reality of the Dust Bowl in immense detail. He opens the novel describing just how all encompassing the drought really was. “ An even blanket covered the earth. It settled on the corn. Piled up on the tops of the fence posts, piled up on the wires; it settled on roofs, blanketed the weeds and trees.” (Steinbeck 3) He tells the story of the Great Depression through the events of the Joad’s family’s move west, along with alternating newsreel style chapters that describe the events of the period ”whose purpose is to present, with choric effect, the philosophy or social message to which the current situation gives rise.” (Lisca, 168) Steinbeck interweaves details with the purpose of showing the dramatic conditions rather than having a solo focus on the Joad family. The strategy is to have the reader form a relationship with the Joad family, then understand social situation as it’s written in every other chapter. The result is “sympathy for the individuals and to moral indignation about their social condition.” (Lisca 172)
The strategy of the alternating chapters helps express the enormity of the Joad’s plight. “The reader must not only be shown the enormity of the widespread suffering, he must also identify with the migrants, and feel their loss, their hope, their frustration and futility, their enduring strength on a personal level. (Owens & Torrance 120)
Leaving Steinbeck’s destitute fields of Bakersfield behind, Nathaniel West’s novel, The Day of The Locust shows characters caught up in a different place with a different brand of desperation. “When The Day Of The Locust appeared in 1939. Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath was the number one best seller.” (Madden 171) Beyond the fact that both books were written in the same time period of The Great Depression, there are several other similarities between these novels. The dream of what California life can offer hits Nathaniel West’s characters with the cold reality of the poisoned dreams of Hollywood, just as the reality of California’s dream hit the Joad family. However it is stated in The Day Of The Locust that: “Refugees from the nation’s great heart have come to die.” “Going West becomes synonymous with the death wish.” (Steiner 169)
“The Day Of The Locust was originally entitled The Cheated. West saw the lower middle classes as a frightening, pugnacious mob of cheated people—victims of America’s dream world” (Mueller 230) The fantasy dream of sunshine and hope leave pulped souls neglected by California’s promise. In West’s novel, the target of Hollywood is the dream itself. The contrast between the dream and reality is familiar among both novels. “Dominating the novel are the twin elements of the search and it’s frustration. Always the searchers are cheated, not only by Hollywood but by life itself, which promises so much and delivers so little… all things are in essence: lies.” (Light 171)
The painter Todd Hackett, who negotiates Hollywood, guides the reader through Nathaniel West’s story and it’s desperate cast of characters. Tod realizes that Hollywood is as fake as the movie sets he builds, and as fragile as the costumes he designs. The artist in his soul is what guides him to be carried into the dream of something more. He is not an actor, or a wannabe, but understands the integrity of art. “Tod, caught in the melee, is swept along helplessly, a cheated one himself.” (Mueller 231) He hopelessly hangs on to his sanity by looking for figures and landscapes to paint. “Abe (the little dwarf man) was an important figure in a set of lithographs called “The Dancers” on which Tod was working.” (West 26) But Todd is trapped by the reality of the fantasy he must paint over and over.
Homer, Faye and Abe represent those who have been cheated out of their dream. Homer is an outsider as many others in California’s fantasy world were, and are. Homer is an empty character who is a shy victim of circumstances. He has unresolved tension mounting from his memories of an awkward sexual encounter he experienced as a bookkeeper in an Ohio Hotel before the move to Hollywood.
Faith in Hollywood is deceptive. Faye is as deceptive as her name. This desperate actress gets jobs doing movie extra work, or if lucky: a badly done one liner. Faye, like many other hopefuls in California’s Hollywood, lies, cheats, and steals to tries to become famous. Her only purpose in life is to be part of the dream world of beautiful people, however she lives in the low-life style of the ugly struggling masses. Faye is oblivious to her fraudulent life. She is heartless just the same. Men flock to her every whim but ends up burned by her fake promises. Her beauty overpowers her ill behavior. “ Raging at him, she was still beautiful. That was because her beauty was structural like a tree’s, not a quality of her mind or heart. (West 120) Her transparent way of using people is not laughed at. Perhaps this is because of the feminine yet cold sexuality she flaunts, and we are put in position of feeling sorry for her. Sorry or not, she still persecutes any man that enters her life. Though laughably ignorant to her ridiculous way, she is not completely dumb. “Yet Faye did have some critical ability, almost enough to recognize the ridiculous.” (West 88) Faye works as a whore to come up with money to bury her father, Harry Greener, and even has sex for a black fitted dress she wears to the funeral. “In her falseness, she suggests the whole Hollywood lie, and her promise, like that of the Hollywood dream-products, leads not to satisfaction, only to increased frustration.” (Light 176) The reality of her existence is that “age, accident or disease” (West 120) will not be the only things that kill her dream because she already lives a lie without hope.
Faye’s father Harry Greener is a ridiculous comic who fails at everything but embarrassment. “In his role Harry purveys a burlesque act consisting of violent kicks in the belly and falls back on the back of his neck. Like another performer, Lemuel Oitkin, Harry occasionally gratifies his insatiable audiences by the extremity of his agony.” (Light 175) He performs like a clown up to the moment of his death. He dies knowing his own reality of failure, knowing that his life was wasted on the Hollywood dream.
West uses symbols throughout the book to heighten the ugliness of a shallow life. “Honest Abe Kusich” is a mouthy and angry dwarf who is first introduced as he lays in a doorway like a “pile of soiled laundry” (West 26) His character is placed in the novel as a way to describe right away that dreams in California are shriveled up, soiled and angry. The dwarf represents the absurdity of the dreams when he is introduced to the readers wearing a “Woman’s flannel bathrobe.” (West 27) In another metaphor, Homers over sized hands symbolize the need for “A life of their own.” (West 39) This dramatizes the fact that Homer is not completely in control of his own destiny, but has a dream of a life of his own. Homer controls his body but not his hands. Even when he awakes, his hands do not. He rinses his hands in cold water to try and bring back feeling into the fishlike deadness of them. The same is true for the other characters caught up in a dream web life. Homer rinses himself in the cold dream world of Hollywood as a way to try and feel something other than the cheated life he lives. A baptism of cold ice is the only result he can get. Another obvious metaphor is the cockfight. The characters in this story will fight until the death, just as the cocks do. The ironic fact is that the cocks are fighting in an underground show in a seedy garage. Although the performance is real, the audience is wasted: It never loves them. Like the people that make the cocks fight, nothing is gained and the feathers never lighten the doomed future of an ugly ratty death.
In West’s novel, Hollywood, California becomes its own character, which dominates the other characters that live within it. The powerful last scene in which Todd drowns among the mob at the movie premier symbolizes the way in which Hollywood and its worldly power can drown a simple man’s dreams with it’s own wrath. Ironically, movies continued to be made and the movie industry flourished during The Great depression. Just as Todd was swallowed by the mob, Depression-Era moviegoers wanted to disappear into the dream worlds of something they could not attain themselves. ”Every day of their lives they read newspapers and went to the movies.” (West 192) Unlike the movie stars on the silver screen the characters in West’s novel, struggle against the crushing reality of Hollywood’s false glitter.
Both Nathaniel West and John Steinbeck lived among the people they wrote about. Although both books are dramatized both stories hit hard truths of the decade. Both novels are sandwiched between the roaring twenties and World War Two. The Great Depression invaded lives of everyone characterized in these books. Despite the fact that people like The Joad family in The Grapes of Wrath were barely hanging on to survival, people like Faye Greener in The Day Of The Locust wanted to entertain. Why during a time of extreme poverty would someone go and watch a movie with their hard-earned wages? It was escapism in its finest form. The only way to escape the reality of life was to live in a dream. Some would watch movies; others would try to be in the movies. It was a way to defy reality. Both novels written in a realism style share hopes, dreams and failed efforts during The Great Depression.
Annotated Bibliography
Carlson, Eric W. “Symbolism in The Grapes of Wrath” (1958)
A Casebook on The Grapes of Wrath, Greenwood Press 2000
Crockett, H. Kelly “The Bible and The Grapes of Wrath”
A Casebook on The Grapes of Wrath
Thomas Y. Crowell Company, Inc. 1968
Dougherty, Charles T. “The Christ figure in the Grapes of Wrath” A Casebook on the grapes of Wrath, Greenwood Press, 2000
Donahue, McNeil, A Casebook on The Grapes of Wrath, Thomas A. Crowell, 1834
Fontenrose, Joseph “Looking Back at The Grapes of Wrath”
The Critical Response to John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Greenwood Press 2000
Light, James F. Nathaniel West: An Interpretive Study, Northwestern University Press, 1971
Lisca, Peter “The Grapes of Wrath as Fiction” A Casebook on The Grapes of Wrath, Thomas Y. Crowell Company, Inc. 1968
Madden, David “A confluence of voices: The Day of the Locust 1”, Nathaniel West The Cheaters and the Cheated, Everett/ Edwards, inc. 1973
Malin, Irving, Nathaniel West’s Novels
Owens, Louis, John Steinbeck’s Re-Vision of America, Georgia Press, 1985
Shockley, Martin Christian Symbolism in The Grapes of Wrath, T.Y. Crowell, Inc. 1968
Steinbeck, John, The Grapes of Wrath, Penguin Group, 1939
West, Nathaniel, The Day of The Locust, Penguin Books, 1983
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