Grapes Guide.pdf - Minnesota Opera

B A C K G R O U N D N O T E S
PROLOGUE
John Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prizewinning
novel The Grapes of Wrath
was first published in 1939, and then
quickly made into a major motion
picture the following year. The reception
was mixed – many found author’s harsh
critique of big business versus organized
labor had a seditious whiff of
Communism about it. Others found the
book’s startling ending vulgar and a bit
too risque for the times (and it was
discreetly omitted for the more pristine
and considerably cheerier movie version).
Nonetheless, the book held its place as a
bestseller and the film earned an
Academy Award nomination for best
picture (but losing out to Alfred
Hitchcock’s Rebecca). Along with other famous works devoted to social change, such as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle
Tom’s Cabin and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, the novel has earned its place in the pantheon of American literature and paved
the way to a notable lifetime achievement award, the Nobel Prize, which the author received in 1962.
Steinbeck (1902 – 1968) was a resident of California during the 1930s and witnessed first hand the plight of migrant
laborers and their clash with corporate agriculture as well as the rampant disease, abject filth and desperate poverty in
which the workers were forced to live. During the 1930s, several hundred thousand “Okies” and “Arkies” descended
upon the San Joaquin Valley, invited by the promise of the harvest, but were then exploited by greedy farmers and never
really welcomed by the local citizens. The ill-timing of the Great Depression with the Dust Bowl had been calamitous
for plains states residents. They were hardly experienced in a region not especially suited to farming, having only been
living there for a couple generations. Unfamiliar with the periodic
MULTIMEDIA LIBRARY
dry spells, crop rotation and the need for wind breaks, the voracious
croppers cut down nearly every tree in favor of acquiring more arable
land. When the drought finally came in 1934, there was nothing to
keep the fatigued topsoil from blowing away. And blow it did.
The dust was pervasive. In a moment’s notice it could blacken the
sun and suffocate any living creature. Staying indoors didn’t help
much – the particles easily seeped through the cracks, and children
in particular fell victim to “black pneumonia” as their lungs filled
with dirt. Farmers already financially stricken by the Depression
found little federal assistance, as the government had been bled dry
by economic blight in all corners of the nation. As crops continually failed, banks foreclosed on life-sustaining loans.
Horse-and-mule-replacing tractors overran houses, and families were displaced, many lured westward by the need of
sheer survival.
As migrants soon discovered, there was far less labor needed than was advertised, thereby keeping wages extremely low,
food in short supply and living conditions poor. Horrific disease-ridden, temporary settlements known as “Hoovervilles”
(sardonically titled after the Depression-era president) and “Little Oklahomas” became the only place to eek out an
background notes
78