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MINE EYES HAVE SEEN THE GLORY

Loving is the word for John Steinbeck (1902-1968). In The Grapes of Wrath that love shows forth at its best. No other American writer can quite compare with him in his deep and abiding compassion for humankind, especially the poor. He is a kind of literary St. Francis of Assisi. Fittingly, in 1962 Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Poverty has always been an embarrassment in America. We do not like it. We wish it would go away. It intrudes on our peace of mind. As a result of our Puritan inheritance, we often feel that the condition of the indigent is somehow their own fault. We talk of bootstraps and give vent to our baser emotions about the poor, the homeless, the so-called underclass. Then when our conscience nags us to do something about them, we devise gargantuan and complex welfare schemes, which are at once paternalistic, demeaning, and unworkable. And still the poor won't go away. Again we speak of bootstraps.

John Steinbeck was away ahead of his time in 1939 when he wrote The Grapes of Wrath. He knew about the poor and he took us on a long journey with them. We watch them as they stand by, helpless, in the midst of the Oklahoma dustbowl in the 1930s. With the forces of nature working against them, the Okies lose home and farm and means of livelihood. Facing a bleak future, they come to grips with their elemental need: survival. To the Okies, California spelled salvation.

In The Grapes of Wrath, we travel with one family, the Joads, as they join forces to do battle against humankind's age-old foe, poverty. Facing almost insurmountable odds, the Joads leave behind their home and their past. They go forward in their second-hand truck, cautiously hopeful, California-bound. The deeper we get into the book, the more involved we become in the lives of the Joads and their friends. Slowly we realize that we are watching not only the Joads in their quest for California, but, in some mysterious way, we are also watching ourselves in our own struggle -- personally, as a nation, and as part of the great stream of humanity.

In his evocation of these emotions in the reader, Steinbeck is superb. He truly reinforces the old lesson that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, because he takes us beneath the ignorance of the Joads, with their naivete, their inelegant language, their casual sex. We begin to see them, not as crude and unlovely, but as vulnerable and eternally optimistic. Steinbeck takes us under their skin, and as we 1ook beyond the surface, we feel their trust, their innocence, their humility. The further we read, the more we see ourselves in the Joads, and we are proud of them. We sense the dignity that is theirs. We root for them. We urge them on to success, the right success, their own dream. We commiserate with them when they are exploited, as they so often are, and rage with them when they are cheated. We suffer with them when they are humiliated. We bask in their bravery as they try to extricate themselves from a social pattern not of their own making.

In his loving creation of Ma Joad, Steinbeck presents us with the past, for it is Ma who tries to preserve the fruits of her experience which she has honed and shaped and compacted into a wisdom to pass down to her young son, Tom Joad. In his acceptance of Ma's legacy of wisdom, Tom represents the future. We listen in awe as Tom, in stumbling words, talks of the Oversoul and tries to explain his sense of oneness with humanity.

We recognize Ma and Tom, for we know those who carry the heaviest load, go the extra mile, take on the burden of the weak. The salt of the earth, they are the ones who hold things together.

It is heartbreaking for the Joads to meet those coming back from California, reporting that things are not so good there, either. This pricking of the bubble of their dream is almost too much; still the Joads go on, refusing to give up.

In The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck shows us all manner of individuals. Some do not have the stomach for the struggle and give up before they even start. Some refuse to believe in the dream because they do not want to make the commitment that the dream demands. Some fall by the wayside, refusing to go on. Some trade in the big, far-away dream, for a smaller, more immediate one.

The startling, realist ending pages of the book are a natural outcome of the story. In this last scene Rose of Sharon Joad, who had just lost her baby in childbirth, breastfeeds a dying man and saves his life. Here Steinbeck teaches us the greatest lesson: in the final analysis, it is the milk of human kindness that will ensure the continuation of the human race.

The Grapes of Wrath: A noble work by a noble writer.

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Other books by John Steinbeck: