Still true today

posted by: Nick Lowles | on: Wednesday, 1 July 2009, 05:37

Sorry I’ve not been writing on the blog for the last few days, I’ve actually been in the States, first at a community organising conference and then having a few days off. Today I spent several hours at the Steinbeck National Center, in Salinas, California, 17 miles west of Monterey, which is itself just down the cost from San Francisco. Steinbeck was a real hero of mine and it was some of his works that made me understand the world as I know it now. Steinbeck came of age during the 1930s depression and it was his graphic writings about the hardship of people that catapulted him onto the national stage. Unsurprisingly I found this section of the museum most fascinating and, perhaps more importantly, most relevant for today.

Steinbeck’s most famous book was probably The Grapes of Wrath, the story of the Joad family and their struggles during the Great Depression. They, like hundreds of thousands of other Americans, suffering from their own hardship of drought and poverty, moved west to California in search of work and a new life. There, they came up against unscrupulous employers and a resident population who were themselves struggling to make ends meet.

Seventy years later the world is again experiencing a recession and the latest scramble for work has brought about a renewed clash between newcomers and more established communities. Some liberal commentators have been quick to condemn the strikers at Lindsay Oil Refinery and other similar disputes as narrow-minded nationalists but it is important to understand the insecurity of everyone at this present moment. Steinbeck graphically illustrated how economic hardship bred fear, resentment and anger in The Grapes of Wrath:

“Men of property were terrified for their property. Men who had never been hungry saw the eyes of the hungry. Men who had never wanted anything very much saw the flare of want in the eyes of the migrants. And the men of the towns and of the sort suburban country gathered to defend themselves; they reassured themselves that they were good and the intruders bad, as a man must do before he fights.”

Seventy years after the book was written, The Grapes of Wrath continues to accurately depict the suspicion and hatred that stems from economic hardship and insecurity.

I would certainly recommend this book to anyone who hasn’t read it.