Why steinbecks okies speak to us today

But early reactions to the best seller second only to Gone With the Wind were heavily weighted with criticisms of its decency, accuracy, and politics. The language and certain scenes prompted vigorous attacks, the most famous of which came from Oklahoma's U. Lyle Boren, who entered his opinion in the Congressional Record that the novel was "a lie, a black, infernal creation of a twisted, distorted mind.

Eleanor Roosevelt responded to such attacks with a defense of its realism: "The book is coarse in spots, but life is coarse in spots. Those upset by the language had some grounds for questioning whether folks brought up in Oklahoma's culture of Christianity would talk so, even if they were not "church people.

One could argue that they, at times, lived down to the prejudiced views of them, in a state where "Okie" was almost a racial epithet. Thematically, their behavior supports Ma Joad's worry that they are losing their ties to each other and that they are in danger of breaking down as individuals. Perhaps a more telling point was made by the many literary critics who admired the poetry of their speech without interrogating its realism.

Clearly, Steinbeck did not study Oklahoma closely. Many readers were left with the impression that Sallisaw was in the Dust Bowl and that farmland in the area was being combined into large holdings by banks and distant corporations.

Such misconceptions aside, however, it was true that most of the Oklahoma migrants came from the more populous eastern half of the state, an area in which a combination of factors, including foreclosure, drove people onto the road West. California growers and businessmen actually had greater cause to be upset about the depiction of their neglect of and sometimes inhumanity to the workers.

But Steinbeck's own earlier articles for the San Francisco News , other accounts, and even the Hollywood studio's on-location fact checking in preparation for the film all revealed that conditions were often worse than portrayed in the novel. There seems justification for the calls from some Oklahomans to send the state militia to protect their countrymen.

A careful reading of The Grapes of Wrath reveals no advocacy of revolution, unless warning of unrest and possible violence, portraying the callousness of many, leavened by the charity of some, and urging more New Deal programs can be seen as extreme. You cannot download interactives.

Catastrophic weather events include hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, and droughts, among others. As these massively destructive and costly events become more frequent, scientific evidence points to climate change as a leading cause.

While they can often be predicted, the loss of life and property take an emotional and economic toll on the community impacted. Explore these resources to teach your students about catastrophic weather events and how they impact every part of the world. The record lows in rainfall and highs in temperature California experienced between to plunged it into a severe drought, which then hurt its economy, especially the agriculture industry.

Join our community of educators and receive the latest information on National Geographic's resources for you and your students. Skip to content. Twitter Facebook Pinterest Google Classroom. Article Vocabulary. In the novel , John Steinbeck follows the fiction al journey of the Joads, a family of sharecropper s from Sallisaw, Oklahoma, forced to migrate west during the Dust Bowl.

The Joads join thousands of other migrants on the trek to the Salinas Valley of California, a place they idealize as rich with opportunity. Both a human and an environmental disaster , the Dust Bowl was a prolonged series of dust storm s brought on by drought and erosion in the United States Great Plains region in the s.

Chad Kauffman, professor of earth sciences at California University of Pennsylvania, explains that drought was not the only factor at play, however. While the region saw less rainfall than usual in the s, it was really the modification s humans made to the landscape —particularly uprooting native grasses and exposing the virgin topsoil to the elements —that set the stage for the erosion that would follow.

These tall grasses have a deeper root structure, and that root structure helps to fix the soil in-place, allowing it to take on the loam y texture that made the region attractive to agriculture.

Coupled with the effects of the Depression on the nation as a whole, many families in the region were devastate d, particularly those who relied on agriculture to make a living. For many, the only choice they had was to leave, and they found themselves on Route 66 headed to California. Many of these families ended up in the Salinas Valley, where John Steinbeck was born, raised, and lived the majority of his life.

Dust Bowl migration, the shaping of Californian identity , and human connection to the environment are all deeply personal topics for Steinbeck. Susan Shillinglaw is a Steinbeck scholar and the author of On Reading The Grapes of Wrath , which reflects on the social, political, and creative impact of The Grapes of Wrath from the time of its publication through to today.

How do you write about weather pattern s, drought, migration, and identity at once, as it is happening? Containing that contemporary story was a challenge … and one way that he met that challenge was to construct a family story that is punctuated by interchapters that tell a larger cultural and historical story.

He structured the book so that it moves from one family, to many families, to the human experience. The Great Depression left an indelible mark on the nation's psyche and turned people's lives upside down. For those of us who haven't been thrown off our digital land, we should be able to "spare a dime," such as a kind word and maybe some short-term special projects for the dot-com Okies as they pass by.

Thornton May is a corporate futurist and chief awareness officer at Guardent Inc. Contact him at thornton. Futurist Thornton A. More information is available on his website at thorntonamay. Here are the latest Insider stories. More Insider Sign Out. Sign In Register. Sign Out Sign In Register. Latest Insider. Check out the latest Insider stories here.

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