~~We are the grapes of wrathWe'll never take a bathIt is our style to seldom smileAnd never laugh!We are the grapes of wrath~~Many of us know the adorable veggies and fruits that play roles in the classic Veggie Tales stories, but would you ever connect them to the 1930s? Neither would I until one day while searching for a topic for this blog I came across a book. It was titled The Grapes of Wrath. Upon seeing this I began to sing the annoying song from Veggie Tales. Soon I realized there was so much more to this book than there was to the cartoon grapes. For starters the people on the cover of the book sure didn’t look like grapes to me.The book was written in 1939 by John Steinbeck. The book takes place during the great depression. The Joads Family is a poor family of sharecroppers who are driven from their home by drought, economic hardship, and changes in agriculture industries. Tom Joads has been recently let out of jail after serving time for homicide. He wanders home to find a deserted childhood farm. Confused he journeys to his uncles to find his family loading their truck with their remains. The family’s crops had been destroyed by the Dust Bowl and as a result the farm was repossessed. With hope still left in their hearts the Joads invest everything they have to the trip to California even though leaving Oklahoma is a risk.On the way there they join many families. Some are taking the same journey and some are coming back from California. As they continue to travel the Joads here many stories that hurt their hopes, but they realize there is nothing left for them in Oklahoma and they must continue on their way. There is little hope of decent wages when they get to California. There is an oversupply of labor and a lack of rights. Hope shows at a utility-supplied camp run by the Resettlement Administration, a New Deal agency, in Weedpatch, but even with that hope there is still not enough money and supplies to care for everyone. Through it all the family remains brave even though they hit many rough patches.The title of this book was given to Steinbeck by his wife who took a few words from the song Battle Hymn of the Republic. “He is trampling out the vintages where the grapes of wrath are stored” the lyrics refer to the biblical passage Revelation 14:19-20, an apocalyptic appeal to divine justice and deliverance from oppression in the final judgment.“And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs”The book was later turned into a movie that was much different from the book. The book touched many people. It was a book written about a recent occurrence and it was frowned upon by many citizens, but it was still read and continues to be today.
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