Why Steinbeck’s Masterpiece is Disturbingly Relevant to Trump’s America
It could not be more fitting that the 80th anniversary of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath falls on Palm Sunday this year. Steinbeck’s 1939 depiction of the fictional Joad family after they, like thousands of others, have been forced off their failing Oklahoma farm, is as much a religious tale of unearned suffering as a political account of the Great Depression.
What makes the Joads’ migrant story—and by extension the stories of other Dust Bowl families of the ’30s—especially poignant in 2019 is the perspective it casts on the trials so many immigrant families face today trying to start new lives in the United States after fleeing their home countries. Except for the brief time they spend in a government-run camp for migrants, the Joads are constantly made to feel unwelcome once they take to the road.
The Grapes of Wrath begins with Tom Joad, the eldest Joad son, returning to his family after being paroled from the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, where he was sent after being convicted of killing a man in a drunken fight. It is through Tom’s eyes that we first see how his family’s life has been turned upside down.