The Grapes of Wrath

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

The Grapes of Wrath (1940), directed by John Ford, who won an Oscar for this movie, is based on the acclaimed novel by John Steinbeck. There are many modifications to appease the censors of the time, but Steinbeck was especially pleased by the performance of Henry Fonda. Ford was difficult to classify politically. Here he focuses on the plight of migrants during the depression and the fight against larger interests, including business and the government, who conspire against the less powerful. The story accomplishes its goal by focusing on one family’s odyssey of suffering from Oklahoma to California, and shows examples of some who are selfish and others who work together for the good of all.

The film starts with a long shot of a solitary man walking in the distance looking small against the vast emptiness of the rural road and land. The effect is to stress loneliness. The contrast between the size of the individual and the large area around him suggests the struggle to survive against overwhelming odds. The black and white cinematography adds to the starkness of the events of the story and the gritty existence of the characters.

The man is Tom Joad (Fonda). He stops at a market meaningfully called the Cross Roads, which suggests that the main character has reached a life-changing point in his life. He asks a trucker for a ride even though the sign on the vehicle says no hitchhikers allowed. Tom asks anyway and says a nice guy wouldn’t give into what someone else wrote on his truck. Here Tom is able to give the driver an excuse to give him a ride by blaming the rigid rule on someone else. It also shows how Tom doesn’t submit to practices that limit his freedom. 

The scene in the truck provides some backstory. Tom says he is going to his father’s sharecropper farm. The trucker asks questions about Tom’s trade and what he’s been up to, noticing that Tom’s hands look as if they have been using a pick or an axe. Tom is angry about how he is being interrogated and frankly tells the trucker he was in a penitentiary for the last four years after being sentenced to seven years. Tom almost enjoys justifying the man’s fears when he tells him he was in prison for homicide. Tom’s status in society appears to many others to be that of an untrustworthy outsider.

Walking on the road to the family farm Tom encounters the ex-preacher, Jim Casy (John Carradine), who recognizes Tom and reminds him that he baptized Tom. He says he’s not a cleric anymore because he lost the calling. However, he seems proud that he baptized many, which points to his ability of showing others a different way of seeing existence. The hard times appear to have shaken his faith as he says now, “I ain’t so sure of things.” He claims that maybe there aren't abstract ideas of “sin” and “virtue” but “just what people does.” The emphasis here is that how individuals behave shows the quality of people, not what they profess. Or, as the saying goes, “actions speak louder than words,” and from the looks of things, those actions haven’t been very beneficial for most folks. Tom catches the man up on his past. Tom killed a man with a shovel in a dance hall after the other guy stuck him with a knife. Even though it was self-defense, Tom was convicted, and he has no regrets about what he did, and would do it again if the circumstances presented themselves. Tom is obviously a man that will not be intimidated.

Stacy walks with Tom as the wind starts howling. The dust storms of the time were devastating for the poor people living in the heartland of the United States. The Joad house is dark and desolate. There are items that belonged to Tom’s family around the house, making the place seem like the decaying remains of a corpse. Tom discovers the stubborn and ominously named Muley Graves (John Qualen) seeking shelter in the dark. He says that Tom’s folks went to Tom’s Uncle John’s place two weeks prior. But, Muley says that everybody there will have to leave, because outside forces are “blowing” them off their land, like the strong winds. It’s not only the economics but the primal forces of nature, like a Biblical scourge, that is sending them away. Tom notes that after living on that farm for fifty years, he finds it difficult to believe that they must go away after putting down deep family roots into the land. He points out how feisty his mother is and wonders how she could not have fought off those trying to remove her. But, Muley says the family received their “notice” to vacate, so the implication is that there wasn’t much that she could do. They are migrating to California. However, Muley says defiantly that he will not leave. A flashback shows how the tenant farmers couldn’t earn enough to pay their rents and the representative of the company that owns the land said that with modern tractors the landowners would be able to pay far fewer people to harvest the crops. So, the farmers were being evicted. When asked who is responsible, the sharecroppers get the runaround so they can’t focus their anger on one individual. The company and the associated bankers are faceless entities as the whole system is conspiring against the average person. Muley echoes Tom’s indignation when he says that the land belonged to them since they were born there, worked on the farms, and even died on them.

Muley says that men came with large caterpillar tractors to force him and the other families off of their properties, leaving them with nowhere definite to live. We see the large wheels of the machines, and the caterpillar name suggests a mechanical plague invading the territory, rolling over everything in sight. The company smartly hires some of the farmers to run the tractors, undermining opposition. One of the operators of the machines says that Muley wouldn’t kill him because Muley would be put away for murder, and besides there would only be someone else to replace him. There is an inevitability to the onslaught, as Muley watched his house bulldozed. There is a shot of the tracks of the tractors making their imprint on the land, and all that is left are the shadows of those who must leave, looking like the ghosts of those who once inhabited the land. Muley, and his neighbors, have become unanchored, and now are wanderers. Muley stayed behind, but he feels that he is “just an old graveyard ghost,” which adds to the funeral feel of the place. After the storm, Muley tells Tom he has to get out of there because he is on parole and he is now a trespasser on his own land in this upside-down world. They hide as the authorities approach, looking for the squatting Muley. Tom can’t believe he would “be hiding out” at his own home.

 

At Uncle John’s place, Ma Joad (Jane Darwell, in an Oscar-winning Best Supporting Actress role) cooks for the family. (The name Joad sounds like Job from the Bible, who, along with his family, are tested by God and suffer greatly). Grandpa Joad (Charley Grapewin, an appropriate name for the film) fantasizes about all the grapes and oranges he will be able to eat once he gets to California, where they can earn money picking fruit. (These grapes of sustenance later become those of vengeful “Wrath” as noted in the movie’s title and in the Bible’s book of Revelation). Grandpa is trying to grasp some optimism out of these pessimistic times. Ma sees her son outside and just hopes that jail hasn’t perverted Tom into someone who has been hurt so much that he has become mean. The thrust here is that treating people with fairness is better than using oppression which has the effect of producing a threat to society. Noah (Frank Sully), Uncle Joad (Frank Darien), young Ruthie (Shirley Mills), and Pa Joad (Russell Simpson) greet Tom. Al Joad (O. Z. Whitehead) arrives in a truck with Tom’s pregnant sister, Rosasharn Rivers (Dorris Bowden) and her husband Connie (Eddie Quillan). Many of the men would like to think Tom escaped from prison, maybe because they want a hero to show that someone can beat the system. This joyful reunion is dampened by the arrival of the authorities telling the Joads that they have to vacate by the next day.

The family loads up their truck in the night which mirrors their dark fate. The truck is so weighed down that it’s questionable if it will be able to literally or figuratively carry all that the family has accrued in objects and memories over the many years there. Ma burns some old news articles and correspondence which shows the mournful letting go of her past life. She has a pair of earrings that remind her of better times, and decides to keep those as a remembrance. Despite his earlier attempt to rationalize that the move to California would be advantageous, Grandpa now refuses because “this is my country and I belong here.” The point here is that not all transplants are successful. They spike the old man’s coffee since being unconscious of what is happening to him is the only way to suppress his strong attachment to the land. Despite their heavy load, they generously invite ex-preacher Casy to go with them. A strong wind blows through the farm as if again signaling how the place is now like a ghost town without those who kept it alive.

They head out on Oklahoma Highway 66. They don’t have much money saved from selling stuff and working extra chores, so they must camp outside. They lay Grandpa on the ground and he feebly still says he isn’t leaving. He grabs a handful of dirt and dies. It’s as if his spirit will not allow him to leave, and his grasping of the soil symbolically shows his holding onto the land that he remains loyal to, even in death. Tom writes a note to be left on the old man’s body that says he died of a stroke and the family couldn’t afford a funeral, so they buried him. Tom says the note will show Grandpa was not killed in case the law digs him up. Tom’s sarcastic comment is that “the government’s got more interest in a dead man than a live one.” He indicts the system for its apathy toward the living while it pursues its own warped version of justice postmortem. Casy says at the burial site that there are words from a poem which read “all that lives is holy,” so he really prays for the living who “don’t know which way to turn.” In this world of pain, he seems to be saying that the dead have peace, relief, and a clear-cut road ahead of them, unlike those still above ground.

 

At a campsite, the Joads meet many other poor people. There is a man who bursts their hopeful balloon by saying he was already in California and there weren’t close to as many fruit-picking jobs there that would accommodate all the people who read the flyers and head out west. He says he lost his wife and two children to starvation because of false dreams. The government, represented by the coroner, covered up the real problem of hunger because it would be disgraceful, and recorded the deaths as heart failure. His story is a chilling indication that the Joads and others are on a road to unavoidable tragedy.

 

The truck is overheating and they stop at a gas station in New Mexico. The owner quickly asks if they have any money for gas. Tom doesn’t like the way the man treats them as if they were “bums.” The film shows that poverty fosters animosity from some as people are pushed to only caring about themselves to survive, and the lack of money undervalues an individual’s feeling of self-worth. Grandma (Zeffie Tilbury) pleads to get out of the truck as the journey is hard on someone of her advanced years. Pa asks for some bread for a dime for her at the diner there. The waitress is scornful, saying they only sell sandwiches, which the Joads can’t afford. But, countering the waitress is the generous owner who tells her to give Pa the bread. When two of the young Joad children enter, the waitress finds her humanity and sells them candy for a couple of cents. The truck drivers who stopped there leave her a big tip. The movie implies that the only way to get through punishing times as a nation is to help each other. 

 When they enter Arizona they encounter a border guard who is intimidating as he asks what they are carrying, and wants to make sure they keep moving so as to exit the state as soon as possible. He most likely does not want another group of needy people adding to the state’s number of impoverished inhabitants. The lack of hospitality from another public employee here again depicts the government’s indifference to the plight of the citizens. The local Highway 66 sign labels it a Will Rodgers road. It is ironic that the entertainer who was noted for saying he never met a man he didn’t like is referenced as people are treated with such negativity.

 

The Joads stop just before crossing into California, and they are not impressed as the picture postcards exaggerated the beauty of the state when compared to what they see. Grandma’s response is to spit out the window of the truck. It gets to the point where hopes are not realized, and they keep going just to have somewhere as a destination instead of simply giving up. At another gas station, the attendants there who have a job are judgmental about the “Okies,” saying it isn’t human to be so miserable, and the travelers don’t have any sense to cross a desert to a place where they only believe they can get work. But, as Tom suggests, when there isn’t any other alternative, the “nerve” to do something that seems outrageous is the only choice one has left. Meanwhile, Grandma is very ill and calls for her deceased husband. The movie implies that it is harder for elderly people to survive relocation from a place where they have become accustomed to living for so many years. 

 

California state workers stop them, and the harassment is extreme here as they are told to unload the mountainous amount of belongings to pass inspection. Again, luckily, there is a sympathetic man who sees how ill Grandma is and lets them go so they can get her to a doctor. The truck runs out of gas and they have to push it along the road, like Sisyphus struggling with his rock. They finally see fruit groves and haystacks, but that joy is undercut when Ma tells Tom that Grandma was already dead when the inspectors checked the truck. Ma pretended that she was deathly ill so that they could keep going without removing all their gear. The situation is so dire that people need the dead to help the living.

 

They push the truck into a city but the policeman there says that there isn't any fruit picking to be done there, and the work has moved further south. It seems that they will never find an end to their plight. The cop came from Oklahoma, too, but he tells them he has no choice but to send them to a transient campsite outside of town or else he will have to arrest them. He says that the real culprit is the person that sent out the flyers with false promises, which is symbolic of the American Dream turning into false advertising for these unfortunate people. The gas station attendant is also hoping for some monetary relief, but when Tom says all they can afford is one gallon, the look of dejection on his face shows how bad times are contagious.

 

The camp is full of broken-down shacks and downtrodden residents. As Tom says in a huge understatement, “it don’t look none too prosperous.” The looks on the Joad family members are ones of despair as they see that many have traveled to this supposedly lucrative land and wound up in the same situation from which they tried to escape. They set up a tent and Ma starts to make a stew. Several sad children come around offering to help for some food since they haven’t eaten anything but fried dough the day before. Ma feeds the family first but there is guilt about the children going hungry. Ma says that the children can have what’s left and they grab cans from a trash heap and scramble around the heated pot for the meager amount of leftovers. We have another example of sharing by those that can’t afford to give up anything. In the absence of a national effort to help the country as a whole, there is a chaotic surge for the little that is available.

 A hiring agent arrives in a nice suit and car with the local sheriff and asks if they want to work. But he will not say how much he’s going to pay. A man there says he has to show a license to hire people and put down in writing what are the wages. Otherwise, he can exploit the poverty of many by getting the job done with many men and paying a tiny amount of money to each one. This situation is where a union would protect the worker. The agent cues the cop to consider the man questioning the hiring tactics to be considered an “agitator,” and possibly resembling a thief in the area. The cop tells the man to get into the car. Tom, no stranger to injustice, says they don’t have any proof the man did anything wrong. The cop then threatens Tom. When the cop tries to apprehend the man, the man knocks down the policeman and runs. The cop fires his gun and hits a woman standing nearby, as she becomes collateral damage to the injustice of the authorities. The courageous men there come to the rescue of their comrade and knock the cop out when he chases the man. Casy tells Tom to hide since he is on parole and then he unloads the sheriff’s gun and tosses it away. He then unselfishly sacrifices himself, saying he was the one that got into a scuffle with the sheriff. Casy smiles since he probably feels that he is actually doing something to help others which he couldn’t do when he was a preacher, removed from what was going on outside his church. 

 

Tom comes out of hiding to warn the family that men in the town plan on burning the camp. Is this their way of removing the blight that proliferates all over the country so they don’t have to see it? Or, is it a punishment, blaming these people for their predicament, and thus washing their hands of responsibility? In addition, Tom’s brother-in-law, Connie, abandoned the family, basically saying he didn’t sign up for this grief. Tom’s sister, Rosasharn, cries over Connie’s leaving, and Tom tries to comfort her, which is not something he is accustomed to doing. She tries to rationalize to deal with her loss by saying Connie left to get some books to prepare for a job, and Ma encourages this fantasy to ease her daughter’s pain.

 

The camp disbands as the people there flee from the threat from the town. One may see this movement as similar to the book of Exodus in the Bible where the Jews escaped torment and began wandering for a promised land. But here that oasis is supposed to be California, which has not been what these searchers were looking for. Tom says that he is becoming angry because he sees the world trying to break their “spirits” and take away their “decency,” and Ma is worried as she was at Tom’s return that he might give into his “wrath.” He almost surrenders to his anger as he grabs a tire iron when they are confronted by a mob of men who don’t want the Joads to enter their town. But, he relents, and the men tell them to turn around because they don’t want anymore “Okies” there. The individual communities seem to be losing any sense of caring about fellow Americans, and the poverty of the country causes division in the nation as each place just cares about itself first. 

 As they fix a flat tire and Ma worries about their dwindling food supply as Tom shows concern about his sister getting close to her baby’s due date, a man driving by stops and gives them temporary hope about jobs picking peaches nearby. It is important to stress these people are always looking for work and are not seeking a handout. They arrive at the Keen Ranch, but there is a commotion with people lining the road and a fleet of policemen present. The cops ask if they are looking for work and direct them to proceed. The Joads do not hear it, but one man calls those arriving “scabs.” We realize that there is a labor strike happening, and the Joads are being recruited as strikebreakers. The impersonal bosses just see them as tools to do the work, as Tom sarcastically says they, “sure do wanna make you feel at home here, all right.” 

 

They are assigned to a tiny, dilapidated shack and don’t even get a chance to unload before they have to join a marching army of men, women, and children into the fields. As is shown in the film Matewan, which focuses on coal miners (analyzed on this blog), the company has the only store where the workers can buy supplies. The store dictates the cost of items, so the company gets back what it pays the employees, and keeps the fruit pickers impoverished so that they can’t get financially ahead and leave. 

 Despite Ma’s concern about him getting into trouble, Tom wants to find out why there was a problem at the gate of the ranch. A man wearing a badge confronts him, and he looks like a real cop but is a hired security guard. He tells Tom he can’t walk around and will be forcibly returned to his cabin. The place is run like a prison camp, so it’s as if Tom never left his incarceration. Tom says he will go back, but sneaks away and finds some men near the riverbank. Casy is among them and he tells Tom he wasn’t sent to jail, just expelled from town. The men there say a strike is going on, and they inform Tom that the five cents a bushel was what they were offered, but then it was cut to $2.50, which, as Casy says, results in, “one ton of peaches picked and carried for a dollar.” The extortion here is brutal. They say that they started to strike, and the company then attracted others to come, is paying them the five cents temporarily, and as soon as the strike is quashed, the wage will be $2.50 again. They tell him when the harvest is done, the bosses will let the workers go, and they will continue scrounging for work. Casy asks Tom to join the strike so that they can negotiate a higher wage. But, Tom reflects the plight of the hungry by saying at least that night they had some meat to eat, basically implying they can’t afford to worry about the bigger picture. The men press their argument by saying that the security men have been harassing the strikers, threatening to beat them up and “run us out.” 

 They hear men coming so the strikers along with Tom try to escape, but the security guards ambush them. Because Casy was considered a leader, and now tells the guards that they are taking the food out of the mouths of children, one man strikes Casy with a large stick, killing him. Tom can’t check his fury, and clubs one of the guards, killing that man. Tom is also hit and sustains a broken cheek before he can run off and get back to the cabin as sirens wail in the background.

 

The next day, Ma tends to Tom’s wound, and says that the guards are telling a different story which says nothing about Casy being killed first. There is talk of lynching the man who killed the guard if they catch him. Tom says he will leave to protect the family. Ma is nostalgic for when they had their own land where “there was a boundary,” which implies security. The longevity of the family was reinforced by the place they settled on and became identified with. As Ma says, “old folks died off and little fellas come.” They came to feel “kind of whole and clear,” knowing who they were and what their purpose was. But that clarity that brought unity is splintering as they have lost their place in the world. They have already surrendered two to death, Connie has left, and Ma says Al, Uncle John, and Pa don’t see themselves as part of a whole anymore. As Ma says, “they’re cracking,” and the rest are lost because they have “nothing to trust.” The film suggests the country has welched on its promise to protect the “general welfare” of its people and relinquished the “pursuit of happiness.” So Ma doesn’t want more dissolution of the Joads and begs Tom not to leave so he can help her hold the family together.

 

They hear a truck passing by and one of the ranch’s representatives tells the arriving family that they are now offering $2.50 a bushel. Despite the complaints as to how it’s impossible to live on that wage, the heartless response is to take it or leave it since more starving people are headed to Keen Ranch and they will be willing to take the low payment. Tom sees that what Casy told him was the truth, and he says the man was like a “lantern,” in essence enlightening him as to the exploitation that was happening. Casy may have achieved making the difference he hoped for.

 

The family tries to sneak away at night, hiding Tom under some bedding. Some guards stop them and ask about the other man who was with them. The Joads use the impersonal nature of the employers against them. Since there was no attempt to really know who was working on the ranch, the hired guards believe the family when they say that the other man was a hitchhiker who left. They still don’t have a promising destination to head toward, but instead keep running away from one hostile place after another. Adding to their problems, the truck finally breaks down and they use the grade in the highway to coast the vehicle. 

 

They arrive at the Farmworkers' Wheat Patch Camp. The difference here is that this place is run by the Department of Agriculture, and the camera zooms in on the sign to stress this point. The place is designed to take care of all of those in need, as opposed to local municipalities just protecting their own interests. A man greets them and says that there was a speed bump that slowed down their vehicle. He says it’s meant to protect children. We know that they are in a place that cares about the welfare of others. Here they are assigned to an area that has a “toilet, showers, washtubs.” There are schools here and they elect their own officials. Ma is amazed probably because here is a spot that demonstrates what a government is supposed to do to safeguard its citizens. Tom finds out that no cops can come in without a warrant. The place even has Saturday night dances. A licensed agent comes in to help with jobs. When Tom asks the pertinent question as to why there aren’t more places like this one, the man signing them in doesn’t know, because there isn’t any logical answer as to why there isn’t more help for victims of a cruel system that forgets about its people in jeopardy. 

 

Tom shuts off the water of an outside faucet that a woman neglected to close as he now feels a responsibility toward a place that shows respect for its residents. The Joad children aren’t familiar with inside plumbing and when they pull the chain on a toilet and hear the water flushing, they think they broke it. It is a funny and sad moment combined since it shows how deprived these young people are of simple conveniences. 

 

Tom has secured a job digging ditches on a farm. The owner likes him and the men working with Tom and warns them that there will be an attempt to stir up a fight at the next Saturday dance. The purpose is to give the sheriff cause to put the camp under the control of the local authorities. The reason is they are afraid of “reds” causing problems. Tom doesn’t even know that the term refers to communists, which shows how innocent people were lumped together with revolutionary political groups so as to undermine the legitimate claims for economic opportunities. 

 

The people at the camp are ready for the agitators and they spot them since the man they said invited them denies their claim. One of the residents saw men on the road nearby with guns, so they know that the sheriff’s department is ready to quickly intervene when trouble starts. They don’t want any evidence of violence on their part discovered that would allow for police intervention of their self-governing community. As soon as the outsiders try to start a brawl, the local men round them up and secretly constrain them. When the deputy sheriffs show up because there is supposed to be a riot they have to leave since everything looks peaceful. We have an example here of unity of purpose as an employer, employees, and fellow citizens band together to prevent injustice.

 

Police do show up at the camp at night because they are investigating the death of the security guard at Keen Ranch and find the Oklahoma license plate on the Joads’ truck. They say they will be back with a warrant. Tom overhears their conversation as a train whistle sounds in the background, and we know he has to leave to protect himself and his family. Ma wakes up and seems resigned to what must be. Tom then delivers his famous speech. He says he has been thinking “about our people living like pigs,” and the disparity in wealth that allows for “maybe one guy with a million acres and 100,000 farmers starving.” He says that “as long as I’m an outlaw anyways, maybe I can do something.” His is implying that his outsider status allows him to take risks to help others since he has no self-interests to protect. He states the transcendental belief that each person doesn’t have a separate soul but there is “one big soul that belongs to everybody,” that we are all bound together and therefore harm to one hurts all, as does good for one benefits all. If he is no longer a separate entity, then he is part of a universal force of existence. That is why he says, “I’ll be all around in the dark. I’ll be everywhere, wherever you can look. Wherever there’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a cop beating up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad. I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready. And when the people are eating the stuff they raise, and living in the houses they build, I’ll be there, too.” He says goodbye to Ma and walks off. There is a shot that bookends the opening, with Tom again walking alone. But now the shot is looking up at the vast sky and after what he learned from his travels and what he said, we know that Tom is not alone. He isn’t wrapped up in his own troubles, but instead feels himself part of the struggle and fulfillment of all things.

 

The family heads out for work in Fresno. Even though Ma admits that she was afraid about how things would turn out, feeling everybody was against them, she says she doesn’t feel fear now. She says that for a woman, life is like a “stream” that flows and has “little eddies and waterfalls, but the river, it goes right on.” So, even though there are setbacks along the way, they can get back on track. Pa says they have had it rough, but Ma says it makes them “tough,” and they will not be beaten. She cheers their resilience as she declares that, “We’ll go on forever, Pa, because we’re the people.” Her last words end with a paraphrase of the U. S. Constitution, which begins with a message of inclusiveness.

The next film is The Great Santini.