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The Grapes of Wrath |
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The Grapes of Wrath is a work of fiction written by John Steinbeck and
published in 1939. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and it is frequently read in American high
school and college literature classes. A celebrated Hollywood film version was made in 1940, starring Henry Fonda and directed by John Ford.
Set in the Great
Depression, the popular proletarian novel, in which descriptive, narrative, and philosophical
passages succeed one another, tells the story of a family of sharecroppers, the
Joads — 'Okie' farmers driven from
their land by drought and the Dust
Bowl, and forced to endure the hardships of migrant workers moving West. Note the
similarity to the name Job (pronounced like "Jobe"), a
man from the Old
Testament that suffered greatly when tested by God, but remained faithful.
The novel details the nearly hopeless situation of the downtrodden American
farmer in the years of the Great Depression, and emphasizes cooperative
solutions to the social problems brought about by industrialization.
Steinbeck experienced a rough time coming up with a title for the epic. "The
Grapes of Wrath", suggested by his wife, Carol, deemed more
suitable than any of the names John himself could come up with. The title is a
reference to The Battle Hymn of the
Republic, by Julia Ward Howe:
"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,
He has
trampled out the vintage where the Grapes of Wrath are stored,
He has loosed
the fateful lightning of his terrible, swift sword,
His Truth is marching
on!"
This phrase originally comes from a passage from the Book of
Revelation: "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"
(14:19).
Steinbeck wrote this book, along with Of Mice and Men, in what is now Monte
Sereno, California, in his home at 16250 Greenwood Lane. When he was awarded
the Nobel Prize in Literature (1962), the Swedish Academy called the book "an epic
chronicle". Tom Joad is released from prison
after serving time for manslaughter, and returns to find his parents'
farm deserted. Finding his family nearby, he discovers that they are planning to
leave for California. Like other
Oklahoma farmers, they have seen
their crops ruined by the Dust
Bowl. Eastern banks and corporate farmers are repossessing the land, and the
Joads have little choice but to look for work in the orchards and fields out
west.
They are joined by a former preacher, named Casy, and a couple they meet on
the road.
En route to California, they discover the roads are choked with thousands of
similarly-situated refugees, and that money is tight. They begin to suspect
California may not be the answer to their problems. The elderly Joad
grandparents, symbols of the old ways, die on the road to California. One of the
sons, Noah, leaves the family en route to fend for himself.
Upon arrival, they find there are dozens or scores of applicants for every
job, and there is little to no hope of finding a stable community in which to
live, or even of a steady income that can purchase the food they need to live.
Their family is broken apart as the pregnant Rose of Sharon's husband, Connie,
leaves to seek better opportunities.
In response to the exploitation of this labor surplus, the workers begin to
join trade unions, and the
surviving members of the family are involved in strikes that turn violent. Tom Joad, the
protagonist, kills a man, and must become a fugitive, promising that no matter
where he runs, he will be a tireless advocate for the common man against the
powerful. Rose-of-Sharon miscarries at the conclusion of the novel, but the
family shows resoluteness in the face of defeat by committing themselves to help
the other members of their community. A film version was produced by Darryl F. Zanuck in
1940. John Ford won the Academy Award for Directing, as did
Jane Darwell for Best Supporting
Actress. Other nominations were for Best Picture, Henry Fonda for Best Actor, Robert L.
Simpson for Best Film Editing, Edmund H. Hansen
for Best Sound Recording, and Nunnally Johnson for Best Screenplay Writing.
This film has subsequently been selected for preservation in the United States
National
Film Registry.
Woody Guthrie wrote
The Ballad of Tom Joad the night he saw the film. He described the film
in a column:
"Shows the dam bankers men that broke us and the dust that choked us, and
comes right out in plain old English and says what to do about it.
"It says you got to get together and have some meetins, and stick together,
and raise old billy hell till you get your job, and get your farm back, and
your house and your chickens and your groceries and your clothes, and your money
back" (reprinted in Woody Sez [New York, 1975], p. 133).
In 1995 Bruce Springsteen released an album entitled
The Ghost
of Tom Joad (featuring a song of the same name, which was later covered
by Rage Against The Machine, and most
recently covered by José González of Junip).
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Source:
Wikipedia Encyclopedia
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Awards
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- Academy Awards, USA: Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, Best
Director
Nominations
- Academy Awards, USA: Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role, Best Sound,
Recording, Best Writing, Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Picture
- National Film Preservation Board, USA: National Film Registry
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The Grapes of Wrath (book) |
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Grapes of Wrath, The, (Mini Movie Poster) |
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Quotes
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- Tom Joad: Takes no nerve to do something, ain't nothin' else you can
do.
- Tom Joad: Sure don't look none too prosperous.
- Grandpa Joad: It's my dirt! Eh-heh! No good, but it's - it's mine,
all mine.
- Tom Joad: Seems like the government's got more interest in a dead man
than a live one.
- Casy: I wouldn't pray just for a old man that's dead, 'cause he's all
right. If I was to pray, I'd pray for folks that's alive and don't know which
way to turn.
- Ma Joad: There, gramma! There's California.
Grandma Joad:
Phbbtt!
- Gasoline Attendant: You and me got sense. Them Okies got no sense and
no feeling. They ain't human. Human being wouldn't live the way they do. Human
being couldn't stand to be so miserable.
- Tom Joad: If there was a law, they was workin' with maybe we could
take it, but it ain't the law. They're workin' away our spirits, tryin' to make
us cringe and crawl, takin' away our decency.
- Casy: Tom, you gotta learn like I'm learnin'. I don't know it right
yet myself. That's why I can't ever be a preacher again. Preachers gotta know. I
don't know. I gotta ask.
- Tom Joad: That Casy. He might have been a preacher but he seen things
clear. He was like a lantern. He helped me to see things clear.
- Tom Joad: I been thinking about us, too, about our people living like
pigs and good rich land layin' fallow. Or maybe one guy with a million acres and
a hundred thousand farmers starvin'. And I been wonderin' if all our folks got
together and yelled...
Ma Joad: Oh, Tommy, they'd drag you out and
cut you down just like they done to Casy.
Tom Joad: They'd drag me
anyways. Sooner or later they'd get me for one thing if not for another. Until
then...
Ma Joad: Tommy, you're not aimin' to kill nobody.
Tom
Joad: No, Ma, not that. That ain't it. It's just, well as long as I'm an
outlaw anyways... maybe I can do somethin'... maybe I can just find out
somethin', just scrounge around and maybe find out what it is that's wrong and
see if they ain't somethin' that can be done about it. I ain't thought it out
all clear, Ma. I can't. I don't know enough.
Ma Joad: How am I gonna
know about ya, Tommy? Why they could kill ya and I'd never know. They could hurt
ya. How am I gonna know?
Tom Joad: Well, maybe it's like Casy says. A
fellow ain't got a soul of his own, just little piece of a big soul, the one big
soul that belongs to everybody, then...
Ma Joad: Then what, Tom?
Tom Joad: Then it don't matter. I'll be all around in the dark - I'll
be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry
people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be
there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids
laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are
eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build - I'll be there,
too.
Ma Joad: I don't understand it, Tom.
Tom Joad: Me,
neither, Ma, but - just somethin' I been thinkin' about.
- Casy: Maybe there ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue, they's just
what people does. Some things folks do is nice and some ain't so nice, and
that's all any man's got a right to say.
- Ma Joad: Well, Pa, a woman can change better'n a man. A man lives
sorta - well, in jerks. Baby's born or somebody dies, and that's a jerk. He gets
a farm or loses it, and that's a jerk. With a woman, it's all in one flow, like
a stream - little eddies and waterfalls - but the river, it goes right on. Woman
looks at it thata way.
- Grandpa Joad: I smell spare ribs. Somebody's been eatin' spare ribs.
How come I ain't got none?
- [last lines]
Ma Joad: Rich fellas come up an' they die,
an' their kids ain't no good an' they die out. But we keep a'comin'. We're the
people that live. They can't wipe us out; they can't lick us. We'll go on
forever, Pa, 'cause we're the people.
- [the family is leaving the farm, heading for California]
Al
Joad: Ain't you gonna look back, Ma? Give the ol' place a last look?
Ma Joad: We're going' to California, ain't we? All right then let's
go to California.
Al Joad: That don't sound like you, Ma. You never
was like that before.
Ma Joad: I never had my house pushed over
before. Never had my family stuck out on the road. Never had to lose everything
I had in life.
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Source:
Wikipedia Encyclopedia
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| Details
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- Actors: Henry
Fonda, Jane
Darwell
- Directors: John
Ford
- Format: Black & White, Full Screen, NTSC
- Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only.
Read more about DVD
formats.)
- Rated: NR (Not Rated)
- Studio: 20th Century Fox
- DVD Release Date: April 6, 2004
- Run Time: 128 minutes
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Trivia
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- The production had a fake working title, "Highway 66", so that the shoot of
the controversial novel would not be effected by union problems. Much of the
dire straits portrayed in the film continued during and after the release of the
movie.
- Henry Fonda, still struggling to became a big Hollywood star, tried to avoid
being a contract player for 20th Century-Fox Studios because he wanted the
independence to choose his own projects (an increasing number of stars at the
time were trying to gain such independence). But when the much-coveted part of
Tom Joad was offered to him, Fonda hesitantly gave in and signed a contract to
work with the studio for seven years because he knew it would be the role of a
lifetime.
- John Steinbeck loved the movie and said that Henry Fonda as Tom Joad made
him "believe my own words".
- Darryl F. Zanuck was heavily involved in all aspects of the production as he
saw it as a personal project. In fact, so meticulous and carefully thought
through was his editing of Nunnally Johnson's screenplay, that Johnson himself
praised Zanuck for his attention to detail.
- Darryl F. Zanuck paid $100,000 for the rights to John Steinbeck's novel - a
staggering amount of money at the time. Steinbeck only allowed the rights to be
sold under the proviso that the film-makers should show the material due
reverence and treat the project responsibly.
- The climactic speech about "We're the people" is not in the original novel -
it was written by Darryl F. Zanuck.
- The film shot for seven weeks.
- Unusually for John Ford, he allowed Darryl F. Zanuck to supervise the
editing. Indeed Zanuck remains one of the very few producers to actually draw
comments of praise from the normally rather critical director.
- Beulah Bondi was in serious consideration for the part of Ma Joad.
- In 1989, this was one of the first intake of films to be voted onto to the
National Film Registry.
- Non-US audiences saw the film with a prologue which explained about the
effects of the Depression and the Oklahoma Dust Bowl.
- Banks and the farming corporations that ran the California farms were not
keen on the original novel (it was banned in some states) and even less so on a
film being made of it. The Associated Farmers of California called for a boycott
of all 20th Century Fox films, and Steinbeck himself received death threats.
- Prior to filming, producer Darryl F. Zanuck sent undercover detectives out
to the migrant camps to see if Steinbeck had been exaggerating about the squalor
and the unfair treatment meted out there. He was horrified to learn that
Steinbeck had actually downplayed what went on in the camps.
- The novel's original ending was far too controversial to be even considered
for a film in 1940. It involved Rose of Sharon Rivers giving birth to a
stillborn baby and then offering her milk-filled breasts to a starving man,
dying in a barn.
- The budget for the film was $750,000.
- The pro-unionization stance of the film led to both Johns Steinbeck and Ford
being investigated during the McCarthy era for pro-Communist leanings.
- Producer Zanuck knew that Henry Fonda was desperate for the part of Tom
Joad. So he let it be known that he was going to offer the part to Tyrone Power.
Fonda pleaded with Zanuck who talked him into signing an eight picture deal with
20th Century Fox.
- Noah Joad simply vanishes after the scene of the family swimming in the
Colorado River. In the book, Noah tells Tom he has decided to stay by the river.
In the film, his disappearance is never explained.
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