The Grapes of Wrath: In-Class Essay

“Poverty keeps together more homes than it breaks up.” – Saki

Although this opinion may not be the most popular in today’s capitalistic society, I personally agree with the statement. Being impoverished is, though not obvious from the surface, a better way to live and understand the essence of life, and what it means to sacrifice and cooperate—sometimes having less is to have more, and this is reflected throughout The Grapes of Wrath.

To be poor does not need to mean that you are at a disadvantage; it is to mean that you are one with the basic principles of nature and of life. The farmers in the book were one with their land; they knew it; they cared for it as if it were their only child. “We were born on it, and we got killed on it, died on it. Even if it’s no good, it’s still ours. […] That makes ownership, not a paper with numbers on it” (45), states one of the farmers at the beginning of the story. Their entire life is given to the dedication of not only their trade, but to the soil of which their families trusted their lives upon to keep them safe from the evils in our world. What was the reason for this intimacy? There was nothing else for them to own, nothing else to gain but their own lives. This was especially true in light of the Great Depression, and can still be true even in today’s good economic climate. Granted, it is not easy to be without wealth, but only in the short run—to have monetary wealth is to have a short-term happiness, but to have spiritual wealth brings with it a long-term happiness and peace of mind that can only be associated with humility. Humility, as the poor migrants had in their times of peril, can only be attained through the lack of materialism, a lack of a feeling of bliss through a green piece of fabric.

The poor migrants did not know greed—It was not possible for them to know greed. As such, the only thing that they were able recognize was love—a love for the land, a love for humanity, a love for the “human sperit” (33), in the words of Jim Casy. In fact, when looked through the eyes of the migrants, these people actually had many possessions, if not worldly: family, charity, and actual lives—something that no bank could ever have in the grips of their thousand hands. This, of course, brings us to the absolute opposite of what the migrants were: the bank. This “monster” (48), like the people, had possessions of its own: money, authority, and apathy toward the common person. It was driven by “the man sitting in the iron seat” (47), and was directed by the thieves of our nation, the ones who steal livelihood for the sake of profit. They brought destruction upon those that understood what existence was truly about, and gained a paycheck as the outcome of doing so. Despite the power that the bank had, there was one aspect of its being that was flawed—it was not a human being. It could not understand spirit or wrath or determination. It could only understand dollar signs. With such a limitation, could you be surprised that the people, who had so much more knowledge in them, could take it down so easily? Granted, it was not taken down by the migrants in the book, but this was proven to be true once the Depression ended.

There is nothing wrong with money itself, so as long as several aspects of humanity stay intact. We must understand our role in nature, and the ability to cooperate with others, since these powers are much greater than money. Money is simply a tool, a device created by humans. Nature did not create money, nature created humans. As such, we do not owe nature with our greed; we owe her with respect for the land.