John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath: Verbal Pictures

What earlier writing and what influences did Steinbeck draw upon to compose The Grapes of Wrath? Steinbeck’s The Harvest Gypsies newspaper articles along with nationally published FSA photographs from the 1930s depicting Dust Bowl Oklahoma and California migrant life provide one answer. A second answer is provided in Working Days, a meticulous account of the one-hundred “working day” period of writing the novel, from March 1938 through October 1938. In his entry #18, dated June 18 [1938] — 9:45 Saturday, Steinbeck reflects: “This is a huge job. Mustn’t think of its largeness but only of the little picture while I’m working. Leave the large picture for planning time.”

The similarity between Steinbeck’s descriptive style of prose and the style of photography found in FSA photographs, including Lange’s images, reflects the author’s “sharp, detailed focus upon “the little picture ‘within’ the large picture.” The daughter of the director of the FSA photography division “had the impression that Steinbeck based his description of the Joad family on pictures from the FSA files in the Library of Congress.” Steinbeck developed a pictorial prose style that matched the photographic images from the newspaper articles of the day, which were already becoming lodged in the minds of the American reader.

The EDSITEment-reviewed website Wessel’s Living History Farm contains an overview of the Farm Security Administration and FSA Photographers whose images illustrated Steinbeck’s newspaper articles and were a source of inspiration to him. For an extensive repository of these photographs, see the Library of Congress resource America from the Great Depression to World War II: Photographs from the FSA-OWI, 1935–1945. Finally, an overview of the novel’s journalistic roots is provided in “Of Migrants and Misdeeds” California and The Grapes of Wrath by Susan Shillinglaw, San Jose State University (available from John Steinbeck Voice for a Region, Voices for America).

In writing The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck set out to supply enough accurate, imagistic details to provide authenticity and help the reader get a clear picture of his characters. These characters channeled the outrage and indignation he had felt after traveling California, researching The Harvest Gypsies. Steinbeck simply couldn’t shake from his mind the conditions of abject misery and horror he had witnessed among migrants in Visalia-Nipomo floods of 1938. The imagistic immediacy with which Steinbeck invests in these characters also ensured that their struggle to rise above their circumstances and maintain dignity against enormous odds chronicled their heroism. His fictional Joad family is imbued with such poignancy and pathos that he raised them to the level of tragic heroes.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.1. Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.2. Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.3. Analyze how and why individuals, events, or ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.4. Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.5. Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text (e.g., a section, chapter, scene, or stanza) relate to each other and the whole.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.6. Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text.

NCSS.D2.His.1.9-12. Evaluate how historical events and developments were shaped by unique circumstances of time and place as well as broader historical contexts.

NCSS.D2.His.2.9-12. Analyze change and continuity in historical eras.

NCSS.D2.His.3.9-12. Use questions generated about individuals and groups to assess how the significance of their actions changes over time and is shaped by the historical context.

NCSS.D2.His.4.9-12. Analyze complex and interacting factors that influenced the perspectives of people during different historical eras.

• Review the lesson plan and websites used throughout. Locate and bookmark suggested materials and websites. Print out Worksheets 1, 2, and 3, along with the Graphic Organizer pages that accompany Activity 2.
• Steinbeck’s The Harvest Gypsies, originally published as a series of seven articles in the San Francisco News, October 5–12, 1936, detail his fieldwork and observations of migrant camp life in California. The Harvest Gypsy articles are available through the EDSITEment-reviewed New Deal Network.
• John Steinbeck, Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath, 1938–1941, ed. Robert DeMott (New York: Viking Press, 1989) is a series of journal entries kept by the author while writing the novel. Relevant passages from this text are included in Activity 2.
• As background preparation for the symbolic import of the imagery introduced in Activity 2, review the video segment “Tracking John Steinbeck, Section 3: The Importance of Chapter 14 in The Grapes of Wrath and the Sea of Cortez,” part of an EDSITEment-created video dialogue on The Grapes of Wrath and Sea of Cortez between Steinbeck expert Susan Shillinglaw and marine biologist, Bill Gilley.

Activity 1. Comparing Lange Photographs and "The Harvest Gypsies"

1. Share a larger view of Figure 1 with students through the hotlink, below.

Figure 1. Dorothea Lange, Migrants, family of Mexicans, on road with tire trouble. Looking for work in the peas. California, February 1936.

[Note to the teacher: omit the above caption for the following activity.]

Share this information with the class:

By 1936, John Steinbeck was an established author with a not-altogether-accurate reputation as a voice for labor. As a result, the editor of the liberal San Francisco News invited him to report on migrant workers in California. Steinbeck didn’t know it, but his investigation would supply authentic visual details as well as sow righteous indignation, and crystalize his own personal morality which later emerged into his masterwork of fiction, The Grapes of Wrath. The Harvest Gypsies newspaper article series was illustrated with Dorothea Lange photographs. These articles, along with their documentary visual images, foreshadowed the imagistic style of the novel to come. The Lange photo (Figure 1) appeared on the cover of a compilation of Steinbeck’s The Harvest Gypsies articles.

While displaying the photo in Figure 1, read this brief excerpt from The Harvest Gypsies with the class:

"… suddenly the roads will be filled with open rattletrap cars loaded with children and with dirty bedding, with fire-blackened cooking utensils … Often they patched the worn-out tires every few miles."

(The Harvest Gypsies: Article 1)

Have students note three details in The Harvest Gypsies excerpt that could apply to the family in the Lange photo; then ask them to create a descriptive title for it.

2. Now, show students a second Dorothea Lange photo, using the hotlink, below, to obtain a larger view.

Figure 2. Dorothea Lange, Migrant pea pickers camp in the rain. California, February 1936.

Have students compare this photo to the following excerpt from The Harvest Gypsies.

This is a family of six; a man, his wife and four children. They live in a tent the color of the ground. Rot has set in on the canvas so that the flaps and the sides hang in tatters and are held together with bits of rusty baling wire. (The Harvest Gypsies, Article 2)

Ask students to list the details in the Steinbeck excerpt that correspond to the family in Figure 2.

Activity 2. “Two Squatting Men in Conference”

For this activity, students perform a visual and textual analysis of an FSA photographic image taken by Dorothea Lange that underlies a specific passage of Steinbeck’s novel, and then trace the evolution of this image into its final form as a major literary symbol in The Grapes of Wrath. (For further information on the symbolic significance of this passage, see the video dialogue on Chapter 14 mentioned in “Preparation Instructions,” above.)

Photo caption

Drought farmers line the shady side of the main street of the town while their crops burn up in the fields. "The guvment may keep us a little I reckon." Sallisaw, Oklahoma. Dorothea Lange: August 1936

Library of Congress

Figure 3. Dorothea Lange, Drought farmers line the shady side of the main street of the town while their crops burn up in the fields. "The guvment may keep us a little I reckon." Sallisaw, Oklahoma. August 1936.

To begin this activity, have students complete the Graphic Organizer/Flow Chart Worksheet. This graphic organizer records their initial observations of the visual descriptive details found in the following sources as a preliminary activity to their analysis and interpretation of this important image in Steinbeck’s writing. The organizer contains a page with the following excerpts provided for easy reference while completing each Block. (A Teacher Key with suggested responses is also provided.):

Block 1. The original Lange photograph of 1936

Block 2. Working Days Journal excerpt June 23, 1938

Block 3. Working Days Journal excerpt June 24, 1938

Block 4. The Grapes of Wrath Chapter 14, excerpt published 1939 (in which Steinbeck’s transformation of this photographic image is built into the narrative)

Teachers may want to have students further visualize Steinbeck’s final version of this image by providing them with an opportunity to illustrate their interpretation of The Grapes of Wrath Chapter 14 excerpt. This may be done independently or as a class activity with teachers reading the passage out loud.

For the rest of Activity 2, teachers guide students sequentially through Worksheets 1, 2, and 3 using the questions to track Steinbeck’s evolving use of this image.

Worksheet 1. Unpacking the photographic composition and considering its historical context: students are guided through an examination of the original FSA August 1936 photograph by Dorothea Lange Figure 3.

Worksheet 2. Developing the visual image into an important literary theme: students are guided through a close reading of two Working Days journal entry excerpts recorded by Steinbeck June 23 and 24, 1938.

Worksheet 3. Integrating the image into a major literary symbol: students are guided through a close and deep reading of a short passage from Chapter 14 in The Grapes of Wrath.

If desired, have students view the video excerpt of scholar, Susan Shillinglaw, reading from Chapter 14, where she articulates the theme “‘I’ to ‘We.’”

Have students select one FSA photograph from this lesson or one they have located on their own. (See the Library of Congress resource America from the Great Depression to World War II: Photographs from the FSA-OWI, 1935–1945.) Ask them to describe details in the photograph that reflect the story of the Dust Bowl migrants as told in Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Students should quote sections of the novel to support their argument.

1. Discovering Context: For more in-depth research, have students read from The Harvest Gypsies to identify additional source material Steinbeck drew upon to compose both profiles of the Joads and the nameless migrants who populate his inner chapters of The Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck’s The Harvest Gypsies articles are available via the EDSITEment-reviewed New Deal Network:

• Documenting the Migrant Experience
• The Harvest Gypsies Article 1
• The Harvest Gypsies Article 2
• The Harvest Gypsies Article 3
• The Harvest Gypsies Article 4
• The Harvest Gypsies Article 5
• The Harvest Gypsies Article 6
• The Harvest Gypsies Article 7
• Starvation Under the Orange Trees

2. Creative Writing: Students take a photograph of human subjects from their own time or use an image from contemporary twenty-first century media. (The subjects should be anonymous or not known to the students). Using the photograph as inspiration, students will emulate Steinbeck’s approach and compose a narrative passage based on the photographic image. Students may compose a journal entry and/or a descriptive paragraph. (They may also try to include broader social commentary within their descriptive passage.) Encourage discussion about the difficulty of this process. Consider as a class the imagination and expertise that Steinbeck commanded in order to transform a single anonymous photograph into an archetypal symbol that becomes the cornerstone of his moral philosophy. (Teachers may want to read excerpts from the Working Days journal to underline Steinbeck’s imaginative process.) Share the compositions in class.