ANALYSIS The Grapes of Wrath(1939) John Steinbeck (1902-1968) “Your idea is the end the book on a great symbolic note, that life must go on and will go on with a greater love and sympathy and understanding for our fellowmen. The episode you use in the end is extremely poignant.Nobody could fail to be moved by the incident of Rose of Sharon giving her breast to the starving man yet, taken as the finale of such a book with all its vastness and surge, it struck us on reflection as being all too abrupt… As the end of the final episode it is perfect; as the end of the whole book not quite.It seems to us that the last few pages need building up.The incident needs leading up to, so that the meeting with the starving man is not so much an accident or chance encounter, but more an integral part of the saga of the Joad family.And it needs something else leading away from it so that the symbolism of the gesture is more apparent in relation to the book as a whole…. Again I repeat, all this seems like sacrilege.Now do as you think best.” Pascal Covici Editor, Viking Press Letter to Steinbeck (9 January 1939) “I’m sorry but I cannot change that ending. It is casual—there is not fruity climax, it is not more important than any other part of the book—if there is a symbol, it is a survival symbol not a love symbol, it must be an accident, it must be a stranger, and it must be quick. To build this stranger into the structure of the book would be to warp the whole meaning of the book. The fact that the Joads don’t know him, don’t care about him, have no ties to him—that is the emphasis. The giving of the breast has no more sentiment than the giving of a piece of bread…. The incident of the earth mother feeding by the breast is older than literature…. You know that I’ve never been touchy about changes, but I have too many thousands of hours on this book, every incident has been too carefully chosen and its weight judged and fitted.The balance is there.One other thing—I am not writing a satisfying story.I’ve done my damndest to rip a reader’s nerves to rags, I don’t want him satisfied.And still one more thing—I’ve tried to write this book the way lives are lived not the way books are written.” John Steinbeck
Letter to Pascal Covici (January 1939) “Californians are wrathy overThe Grapes of Wrath…By implication, it brands California farmers with unbelievable cruelty in their dealings with refugees from the ‘dust bowl.’It charges that they deliberately lured a surplus of workers westward to depress wages, deputized peace officers to hound the migrants ever onward, burned the squatters’ shacktowns, stomped down gardens and destroyed surplus foods in a conspiracy to force the refugees to work for starvation wages, allowed children to hunger and mothers to bear babies unattended in squalor.It implies that hatred of the migrants is fostered by the land barons who use the ‘Bank of the West’ (obviously the Bank of America) and the ‘Farmers Association’…to gobble up
Want to read all 30 pages?
Previewing 3 of 30 pages Upload your study docs or become a member.
Want to read all 30 pages?
Previewing 3 of 30 pages Upload your study docs or become a member.
End of preview
Want to read all 30 pages? Upload your study docs or become a member.