Grapes Guide.pdf - Minnesota Opera

Testaments unexpectedly, with deception
and guile. There are the more
straightforward examples, including the
names of Noah, Rose of Sharon and the
opera’s baby Moses (and the more saintly
Thomas, John and James), or the title of
work itself drawn, from the spiritual The
Battle Hymn of the Republic and from
Revelation, with the suggestion that God’s
righteous fury could (and probably should)
come at any time. (The title was the brain
child of co-dedicatee Carol Steinbeck, who
laboriously typed and edited the
manuscript.) The parallels to Exodus are
also evident – the Joads leave “plagueridden”
Oklahoma to cross the Mojave
Desert and end up in the Promised Land, led by Tom Joad, recently returned after having been banished for killing a man.
But in a strange twist, he who is named Moses, though journeying down the river in a “basket,” is stillborn, and the Joad’s
Eden is far from paradise (serpentine imagery is also pervasive), filled with scarcity, skitters, distrust and death. Even the
“Wife of a family with three children. She is
38; her face is lined and thin and there is a
hard glaze on her eyes. The three children
who survive were born prior to 1929, when
the family rented a farm in Utah. In 1930
this woman bore a child which lived for
months and died of “colic.” In 1938 her child
was born dead because “a han’ truck fulla
boxes run inta me two days before the baby
come.” In 1932 there was a miscarriage. “I
couldn’t carry the baby ‘cause I was sick.”
She is ashamed of this. In 1933 her baby
lived a week. “Jus’ died. I don’t know what
of.” In 1934 she had no pregnancy. She is
also a little ashamed of this. In 1935 her
baby lived a long time, nine months.
“Seemed for a long time like he was gonna
live. Big strong fella it seemed like.” She is
pregnant again now. “If we could get milk
names Joad has been interpreted as a variant of “Judah,” or by example of
Okie-speak mispronunciation, the ever-suffering Job. An unwritten code of
conduct becomes the Mosiac Law of the camps – the right of privacy within
the tent, the right to feed the hungry or refuse help, the rights of the pregnant
and the sick above all else. The great flood comes, but lacks a Noah – too
simple to save the world anyway, he takes a wrong turn at the Colorado River
and disappears forever. And paramount to the entire narrative, Rosasharn’s
powerful breast-feeding scene has the resurrective/restorative quality of the
Eucharist as well as the traditional visual art composition of the Pietà.
There are the twelve Joads, the twelve disciples (including one Judas, Connie
Rivers, lying outside the family gene pool), who follow the “Christ” figure,
Jim Casy. He shares his initials with the Messiah as well as a few other traits.
The most introspective character, Casy has spent several years wandering the
wilderness, a preacher who is eager to spread his new doctrine to anyone who
will listen, including a
sometimes impatient Tom. Casy
sacrifices himself twice, once to
take the place of Tom in prison
and again by the blunt force of a
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bully who doesn’t understand his teachings, his final words a minor
modification of Christ’s: “You don’ know what you’re a-doin’.” 1 Developing
a socialist agenda that gives way to strike and unionization, Casy imagines
the new world as a brotherhood of equals rather than a hierarchy of oppressor
and the oppressed. Tom, while isolated in his womblike cave, germinates
on these ideals (“He talked a lot. Used ta bother me. But now I been thinkin’
what he said, an I can remember – all of it.” 1 ) After Ruthie reveals his crime to her playmates, Tom goes out on his own
to become Casy’s successor in a mission to bring together a larger community (his role as the new saviour presaged by his
prison nickname “Jesus Meek”), preaching socialism as an alternative to faith.
for um I guess it’d be better.” 2 81
background notes