The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck published his novel the The Grapes of Wrath in 1939, shortly after the great depression. It’s set in the time of the dust bowl, where much of the top soil of the great plains, from Texas all the way up to Canada, was blown away after years of unsustainable farming methods combined with a decade long drought. Because of this, many of the subsistence farmers who had lived on the plains since the great westward migration were forced off their land, either because they could no longer grow enough to support themselves, or because the land they rented was repossessed by the banks and turned into giant fields which could turn a profit when worked by tractors. In all about a million ‘Okies’, as they were know because they predominantly came from Oklahoma, made the journey from the plains to California. Steinbeck documents the gruelling trip west of the Joad family and the injustices they faced when they arrived in California. He presents a simple, yet moral and compassionate family, who are at the mercy of forces they cannot understand.

Steinbeck was greatly criticised upon the release of the book, it was even banned in some states. The main accusations were that he was a leftist or communist and that he had romanticised the Okies, demonised the big businessmen and exaggerated the conditions the Okies lived in when they arrived in California. From my perspective, I think it is a brilliant work of left-leaning, worker supporting literature, and I find it ironic that it is now a standard issue high school book throughout much of the USA, the citadel of capitalism. His anger at the exploitation of the worker at the hands of the bourgeoisie and establishment comes through powerfully in the character of Tom Joad (made famous thanks to Springsteen):

Then I’ll be all around in the dark - I’ll be ever’where—wherever you look. Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there… I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad an’—I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folk eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build—why, I’ll be there.

Tom Joad is the pivotal character of the book, he is the first person we come into contact with and he represents the opression, anger and helplessness of the average Okie. He is morally complex however, as the book opens we meet him returning home from jail having served time for murder; Steinbeck shows us that despite his flaws his heart is in the right place and uses his thoughts and actions to provide a reflection of the reader. I found Tom Joad acting in the way I would like to act and making manifest the passion and anger I felt as I followed his journey.

Steinbeck’s own views come out in the narrator chapters scattered throughout the story. This clear, poetic, detached viewpoint juxtaposes beautifully with the harsh vernacular tongue of the rest of the book; it provides respite and allows him to convey a more rounded and far reaching point of view. The following quotes are two of my favourites:

…every one a drum major leading a parade of hurts, marching with our bitterness. And some day—the armies of bitterness will all be going the same way. And they’ll all walk together, and there’ll be a dead terror from it.

Men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby their fruits may be eaten. And the failure hangs over the State like a great sorrow. …and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

Steinbeck taps into the rage of the impoverished, but more importantly he captures their will to survive, you rarely find the family despairing at the terrible situation they are in, rather the book is a tale of drive after drive in pursuit of a dream which is ultimately a fantasy. I ended up pitying them because all their work was in vain, but admiring them for their unstoppable will to survive and their simple yet profound sense of morality.

I think it is fantastic that seventy years on Steinbeck is still important, and his books are so widespread. People need to read such things, they need to feel the anger and compassion, and they need to channel that energy into trying to help solve these problems for the exploited and downtrodden of our day. In Grapes of Wrath he has written an epic, moving and powerful yet gentle and compassionate book, and thankfully his achievement has not been overlooked.

I’m currently reading How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton. When talking about how Proust helps to expand the world around us by pointing out the things we tend to miss, he writes the following:

An effect of reading a book which has devoted attention to noticing such faint yet vital tremors is that once we’ve put the volume down and resumed our own life, we may attend to precisely the things the author would have responded to had he or she been in our company. Our mind will be like a radar newly attuned to pick up certain objects floating through consciousness; the effect will be like bringing a radio into a room that we had thought silent, and realizing that the silence only existed at a particular frequency and that all along we in fact shared the room with waves of sound coming in from a Ukrainian station or the nighttime chatter of a minicab firm. Our attention will be drawn to the shades of the sky, to the changeability of a face, to the hypocrisy of a friend or to a submerged sadness about a situation which we had previously not even known we could feel sad about. The book will have sensitised us, stimulated our dormant antennae by evidence of its own developed sensitivity.

I’ve not read anything by Proust, but this sums up exactly how I feel about Virginia Woolf. Proust faced criticism because he spent thirty pages describing himself getting out of bed in the morning, he was still writing his book In Search of Lost Time when he died, at which point it was seven volumes, each of around 500 pages, so you can understand the frustration of a reader who thought he dwelled too long on trivial matters. Rather than moving too slowly and taking in every little detail, I find that Woolf packs her books so densely that every page takes an age to read because there is so much between the lines, so much depth in every sentence. She concentrates exclusively on those ‘faint yet vital tremors’ and skims over surface appearances. It’s more like reading poetry than reading a novel, and in books like The Waves she almost jettisons the plot altogether in favour of a series of vaguely chronological moments which almost totally lack context or setting; she is interested only in these important events, not in the trivialities in between.

When I finish one of her books, or a book by one of the few other authors that moves me in the way Button describes, I feel impassioned, as if the world around me has taken on an extra dimension. Woolf  does this by drawing out so much of what is going on behind the scenes of our senses, our desires, our relationships. Of course, the new dimension and level of understanding she provides fades with time and sadly my dreams of having Woolf-like conversations and experiences disappear quite quickly. I think that the great author often has to sacrifice a certain amount of the ‘normal’ wavelength in order to tune into these new deeper levels of experience, as is demonstrated by the frequently difficult lives such authors lead. Both Woolf and Proust had extremely tragic lives, Woolf ended up drowning herself, and Proust was constantly sick, neither seemed able to live out the rich existences they managed to create for their fictional characters.

I see education as a similar tool for opening up new dimensions to my experience. I try to learn the names of trees and flowers and animals so that I can enhance my perception of the world around me. By learning new subjects it helps me to notice things I had previously overlooked. For example, in the past when looking at a forest I would have just seen a green mass of trees, at most being able to separate the pines form the broad leaved trees, but now I have learnt the names and characteristics of just a few species I have opened up a whole new level of pleasure in perception as I walk through the woods. Not only do I see all the species, but I see them changing, I see the Horsechestnuts dying everywhere, and it makes me realise that these trees are growing and dying, whole species are growing and dying. Away from nature in a cityscape I can learn about media and advertising, about typography and methods of communication, about architecture and history; this turns previously background advertisements into interesting subjects for some primitive form of pop-psychoanalysis. I can think ‘why are they advertising that in that way?’, ‘does it work?’ or ‘why do i find this advert seductive?’. It all adds an extra dimension to the world around me.

The real skill of authors like Woolf is that they go beyond this intellectual enhancement and they tap into the deeper realms of thoughts and perceptions. Education tends to enhance the world outside of myself, but Woolf can enhance the world inside of me, teaching me more about myself which I can then in turn use to better understand the people and environments outside. As Button says, it sensitises us, not only to the world around us, but more importantly to the world within ourselves.

I have recently started an account at Tumblr imaginatively entitled The Simulacra Tumblr. Tumblr is similar to a blog, but rather than me writing content, I link things and save quotes and pictures and videos etc.

I started it for two reasons, firstly because I wanted to have a place where I can easily share links to things I am interested in, and that I hope others may be interested in, and secondly to give myself an improved and more coherent record of where I have been on the internet and the most valuable ideas I have come into contact with. Having things linked chronologically all in one place enables me to skim back over things I have previously visited so I can better cement my ideas and hopefully better amalgamate them into myself and my writing.

The tumblr is much more political than this site, I’ve deliberately stayed away from too political subjects here. The tumblr is meant to provide an accompaniment to this site, rather than an extension; adding an extra dimension to my personal datawake. The majority my internet browsing relates to news, media and environmental and social justice issues, so that is most of what will be appearing there, along with a few snippets of other things. Hopefully you can find something interesting and maybe discover some new sources for ideas.

Again, following on from clarity.

In 1894 Gustav Klimt was commissioned to do three paintings for the University of Vienna entitled Philosophy, Medicine and Jurisprudence.

This is the picture he presented for Philosophy:

The philosophy professors were outraged when they saw this and refused to accept his paintings. They wanted an image showing “The triumph of light over darkness” and instead Klimt had given them this opaque ‘deliquescent triangle’ of bodies drifting about and into each other surrounded by a void. I see this as a wonderful summary of how I see philosophy and knowledge, it’s beautiful, captivating and mysterious and I feel like I am growing in some way as I explore it, but on the other hand it’s a mess, no matter how long I examine it I am not going to be able to pick up any clear and distinct forms; not only that, but the ideas and shapes I see now will change over time as I myself grow and change.

The original painting was destroyed by the retreating Nazis in the second world war, the above is a photograph (hence the black and white). This seems a pretty fitting end for the painting. Not only is knowledge this vague phenomenon, but it’s not immortal. Just as the classics were lost in the dark ages, if the Nazis had succeeded a great deal of knowledge would have been forgotten or discarded. We know of a significant number of books by Greek thinkers that have been lost, considering the impact Plato and Aristotle have had on our modern thinking, who knows how the direction of our learning would have been affected if these books had survived? In the same way it’s likely, if not inevitable, that at some point in the future a great deal of our current knowledge will be lost, and in a few billion years time it’s almost certain that all trace of humanity will be gone and all our ideas will just be floating around in Klimt’s void.

Following on from clarity.

When we have a clear understanding of something, is this called wisdom? So the wise person is the person who sees things clearly? Perhaps. In think wisdom is more intuitive and wide ranging than the clarity I have been writing about, although I may be over estimating the role of education and knowledge in obtaining clarity. Maybe a better approach to gaining clarity would be to remove layers of knowledge and experience until a core ’simple truth’ is reached that throws a new light on everything. But can I even be sure that such a simple truth exists under myself and my relationships? My normal line of enquiry would be to go and learn about it and see what other people have to say, but in doing this I’m gathering more knowledge - catch 22.
Maybe clarity forms a subsection of wisdom; the wise person has clarity in their perception and uses this knowledge to make the right decisions and lead a life of wisdom.

I recently realised that one of the big goals in my life is the pursuit of clarity. Clarity in all things, in my understanding of myself, my relationships and those around me. Clarity in an intellectual sense; that I have clear justified opinions crafted out of deep and sound knowledge. Clarity in an emotional sense, that I am sensitive to and can isolate what I am feeling and what has caused it and that I can understand the emotions of others in turn. I’ve only recently realised this goal, and I’m still only beginning to understand it. Seeing as one of the least clear things in my life is my understanding of myself, it’s ironic that I’m trying to gain clarity of my own nature by exploring my own pursuit of clarity.

When I was younger, as for most children, everything was much clearer. I was brought up with Christianity and that was able to answer most of the questions I had, but at the same time I used to read a great deal of science. As I grew older the influence of scientific thinking on me increased and by the time I reached my mid teens and discovered philosophy and Philip K Dick my Christianity crumbled under the weight of all the new ideas I was coming into contact with. This was a great turning point in my life and I certainly don’t regret moving away from Christianity, but because of it a great number of questions that I used to have answers to now seem to be bottomless pits of questions leading to more questions. These aren’t just big metaphysical issues like ‘is there a God?’, but also smaller things like how to manage relationships and what knowledge I should be acquiring. It means I am generally lost in a sea of questions and misunderstandings, however I’d rather be drowning here than commit to an authority just for the sake of providing answers and security for myself.

I first realised that I was seeking a form of life-wide clarity when I was last trying to work out my political opinions. I have read a fair bit of political and economic theory, as well as history and social commentary, but I still have no firm political stance or opinions on how society should be organised, I only have moral responses to things I see going on around me. If anything, as I find that as I learn more about social science, my views become increasingly cloudy and I find myself flipping between opinions as I read convincing (or unconvincing) arguments from different sides.

I think part of the reason I like mathematics and the hard sciences is that they tend to provide coherent and generally-accepted answers to questions, and the unknown questions are unknown for everyone until some sort of breakthrough occurs. This new knowledge then tends to be accepted fairly rapidly as it is scrutinised by other scientists (unless controversy is involved) and becomes part of the established scientific canon. Of course, there are revolutions in science, however in any given paradigm most people tend to be on the same page. In the social sciences, on the other hand, there can be multiple answers to questions and seemingly intelligent and convincing arguments to believe many of them. Even if I spent the rest of my life studying social science, my answers to questions and problems would be changing from year to year as I gained clarity in my knowledge and understanding. In the hard sciences there is a continuous process of clarification too, but there is often a distinct level of clarity required to understand an answer and once this is gained the answer is concrete, even if the full intricacies and repercussion of the solution are not apparent.

Why do I pursue this clarity? Well, that’s still mostly unclear to me (ha!). I think that I desire a solid foundation to work from. If I have a set political or social ideal to work towards and I know the path to realise that ideal then I can get cracking and work on it. As it stands, I have no idea what direction I should be heading in. I know what I want from a moral perspective, peace, love, tolerance etc, but I can’t begin to imagine what a society with those values would look like, how to work to create one or whether such a utopia is even possible. I’m reduced to acting on relatively small scale issues such as ‘I know it’s good to support amnesty international because they have clear moral aims’, I leave the logistics of achieving those aims for them to worry about.

I’m unlikely to ever gain the clarity I seek, and even if I do that probably wouldn’t be a good thing. Unless I have some sort of epiphany and join a religion or line up behind some towering intellectual figure I’m just going to have to make do with piecemeal, narrow and shallow knowledge I do have and try and live more by my moral convictions rather than my ever-shifting opinions.