On this date in 1939, John Steinbeck’s novel Grapes of Wrath was published. 10 facts about it.
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For those who haven’t read it, it is about the Joad family who live in Oklahoma during the great depression. They are tenant farmers beset by economic hardship caused by drought, industry changes and bank foreclosures who are forced to leave their farm to find work in California.
The road they take is described as “The Mother Road”, which is actually Route 66. Route 66 has been nicknamed The Mother Road ever since as a result.
Inspiration for the novel came when Steinbeck was working as a journalist and was commissioned to write some articles about migrant labour camps in California. He wrote about the appalling conditions he saw there in The Harvest Gypsies, a series of seven articles that ran in the San Francisco News in October 1936. He used much of what he wrote in The Grapes of Wrath.
He needed more than his own observations, though, and used some notes given to him by Tom Collins, manager of the Migratory Labour Camp in Kern County, California. What he didn’t know was that another writer, Sanora Babb, had written the reports as a basis for her own novel, called Whose Names Are Unknown. Her novel was eclipsed by the success of Steinbeck’s, so she didn’t publish it until 2004, a year before she died.
Steinbeck’s wife, Carol, typed the manuscript for him and also came up with the title. It comes from a line in The Battle Hymn of the Republic: “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord/He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.” Julia Ward, who wrote the song, in turn got the phrase “grapes of wrath” from The Bible, Revelation 14:19 to be exact. Using a line from The Battle Hymn of the Republic, in Steinbeck’s mind, would label it as an American book and not Communist propaganda.
Nevertheless, the Associated Farmers of California denounced it as exactly that, furious at the novel’s suggestion that they used cheap labour. They called it a pack of lies and held book burnings. Things got so bad that the FBI put Steinbeck under surveillance, and his local sheriff advised him to carry a gun. However, the actual Communist Party didn’t like it either – it was banned in the Soviet Union, because it showed that even the most impoverished Americans could afford a car.
Despite all that, it was a runaway success and sold over 400,000 copies in its first year. The New York Times called it “a magnificent novel of America.” First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt loved it too, and wrote glowing reviews in her newspaper column, calling it “an unforgettable experience in reading.” It netted Steinbeck the 1940 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction and was part of the reason he won the Nobel Prize in 1962.
Steinbeck kept a journal while he was writing the book, which tells us it wasn’t an easy process. He knew what he was writing was possibly destined for greatness but was plagued with self doubt. “This book has become a misery to me because of my inadequacy,” he wrote. He also wrote "It isn't the great book I had hoped it would be. It's just a run-of-the-mill book."
It was made into a film in 1940, directed by John Ford and starring Henry Fonda as Tom Joad. Ford won an Oscar for Best Director and Jane Darwell won Best Supporting Actress as Ma Joad. The novel has also been an inspiration to songwriters. Woody Guthrie, Kris Kristofferson, Bruce Springsteen and Mumford & Sons are among the many artists who have used characters and scenes from the story in their songs.
There’s an urban myth that the Japanese translation is called The Angry Raisins. It wasn’t, but there’s possibly a grain of truth. Steinbeck’s widow once went into a book shop in Japan to ask if they had any of her late husband’s books. The owner allegedly thought for a moment, and then said yes, he had The Angry Raisins. So a mistranslation by that one individual became an urban myth.
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