The Grapes of Wrath: 10 surprising facts about John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath: 10 surprising facts about John Steinbeck's novel John Steinbeck's 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath won the Pulitzer Prize Credit: AP Martin Chilton , Culture Editor 16 September 2015 • 1:13pm John Steinbeck, who was born on February 27, 1902, was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1962. His 1939 book The Grapes of Wrath, published 75 years ago on April 14, has sold more than 14 million copies in the past 75 years. Here are 10 things about the novel that may surprise you. The book gave Route 66 its nickname In The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck became the first writer to refer to Route 66 – the two-lane, 2,448-mile-road that connects Chicago to Los Angeles – as the "Mother Road". In doing so, he helped capture the road’s image of redemption and turn it into a cultural icon.

The fictional Joad family of the novel was an example of the thousands of people migrating to California to escape the despair of the Dust Bowl states, and many used Route 66. "66 is the mother road," Steinbeck wrote, "the road of flight." John Steinbeck in 1962 Credit: AP His novel was burned and banned The Associated Farmers of California dismissed the novel as a "pack of lies" and "communist propaganda". The book was briefly banned in the Soviet Union by Joseph Stalin, because the ruling Communist Party was troubled by the thought that it showed that even the most destitute Americans could afford a car. Steinbeck received death threats and the FBI put him under surveillance. The book was banned in many libraries and copies were symbolically burned in towns across America.

When WB Camp, one of the most successful cotton producers in California, presided over its burning in Bakersfield, he said: ''We are angry, not because we were attacked but because we were attacked by a book obscene in the extreme sense of the word.'' It came out on a Friday The book was published on Friday April 14, 1939, on the same day that the film Wuthering Heights, starring Laurence Olivier, had its premiere in New York. It was also the day that President Roosevelt wrote to Hitler to say: "Are you willing to give assurance that your armed forces will not attack or invade the territory or possessions of the following independent nations?" with a list that included Poland, Belgium, France, Great Britain and Ireland. Writing the book stretched Steinbeck's nerves The novel was written over five months (June-October 1938) and his diaries (Working Days: The Journal of The Grapes of Wrath) show a man losing control and confidence. He was writing shortly after the death of his brother-in-law and it was a time in his life when he was plagued by doubts about the prospect of war and worries over the sale of his house in California.

"Did ever a book get written under such excitement," he wrote. "My whole nervous system is battered. I hope I’m not headed for a nervous breakdown. My nerves are going fast. . . I wish I could just disappear for a while. So many things to drive me nuts. I’m afraid this book is going to pieces. If it does, I do too." When it was finished he wrote: "It isn't the great book I had hoped it would be. It's just a run-of-the-mill book." The run-of-the-mill book won the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for Literature. He was proud of his research While writing The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck visited Arvin Federal Government Camp near Bakersfield, portrayed as "Weedpatch Camp" in the novel. The camp is still used by migrant workers. You should have kept your first edition The first edition Viking Press hardback was 619 pages (260,000 words), cost $2.75 and had a dust jacket illustrated by Elmer Hader. There were around 50,000 printed and it became the bestselling book in America in 1939.

By February 1940 the novel was already in its eleventh printing, and 428,900 copies had been sold. A mint condition first edition is now worth more than £15,000. How the title came about The title was taken from The Battle Hymn of the Republic (Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord/He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored) written by abolitionist Julia Ward Howe in 1861. "I like the song because it is a kind of march and this book is a kind of march," said Steinbeck. The novel has been chosen only once as the Desert Island Discs book of choice, by former newspaper editor Derek Jameson, although singer Petula Clark picked his collected short stories. Steinbeck loved Henry Fonda's portrayal of Tom Joad Darryl Zanuck purchased the film rights for The Grapes of Wrath for $75,000. Concerned about controversy, Zanuck decided to hold the premiere of The Grapes of Wrath in New York. The film, directed by John Ford, received glowing reviews.

Steinbeck said Henry Fonda's performance as Tom Joad made him "believe my own words". Steinbeck and Fonda remained friends and the actor read Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem Ulysses at Steinbeck's funeral in 1968. Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell and Dorris Bowdon in John Ford's film of John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath Credit: Rex Features The Wrath of Grapes Steinbeck is not the only author to use the title The Grapes of Wrath for a book. In 1917 Boyd Cable (1878-1943) wrote a book of stories under that name, subtitled 'Twenty-four Hours in the Life of a Private Soldier', about the First World War. There was also a Twenties temperance book called The Grapes of Wrath. In 2003, Lewis Perdue wrote a book called The Wrath of Grapes, about the wine industry. Bruce bonus Bruce Springsteen is the proud owner of a bronze bust of John Steinbeck, presented to him with his Steinbeck Award in 1996 from the Steinbeck Centre at San Jose State University, in California.

Springsteen, inspired by the songs of Woody Guthrie about the Dust Bowl era, had recorded a song based on The Grapes of Wrath called The Ghost of Tom Joad. The 100 best novels: No 65 – The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939) | Books | The Guardian The 100 best novels The 100 best novels: No 65 – The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939) One of the greatest of great American novels, this study of a family torn apart by poverty and desperation in the Great Depression shocked US society June 1938: A family in Pittsburg County, Oklahoma is forced to leave their home during the Great Depression, due to a serious drought in the region. Photograph: Dorothea Lange/Keystone/Getty Images Share on Messenger Close I began this series with the suggestion that the enduring classics of English and American fiction were novels written either from a burning need for self-expression, often in extremis (Pilgrim’s Progress), or from a passionate desire to entertain an audience with bravura storytelling (Tom Jones).

Of course, over time, as the idea of the novel matured, and its readership developed, these comparatively raw instincts would become more sophisticated, getting softened, deepened and tamed. More subtle considerations would come to dominate the genre. Yet this domesticated bourgeois pet would never, as it were, lose a capacity to bare its teeth and drag the reader back into the wild. The Grapes of Wrath, no 65 in this series, is a novel with blood on its teeth. This is the “American book” Steinbeck always longed to write, a realist tour de force which exemplifies the quite primitive instincts that originally governed the Anglo-American novel, a cry of rage – mixing blue-collar bitterness, prairie folk wisdom and regular left-wing politics – from a best-selling writer inspired to pick up his pen by a deep sense of social injustice, in this case the dreadful conditions of immigrant farmhands in the American south-west. Steinbeck’s exposé of the social and economic horrors of farming life in the American dust bowl was a campaigning document by a writer with a conscience who had, as it happened, been born on a farm.

The starkness of his narrative, and his sense of injustice, echoed the haunting photos of Dorothea Lange . Like her, he was not afraid to devote his art to the scandal of the Okies (Oklahoma migrants) who trekked to the fruit fields of the Golden State (California) in search of a better life, and suffered horribly in their search for a promised land. Pinterest John Steinbeck at home in Sag Harbour in 1962, shortly after the announcement that he had won the Nobel prize award for literature. Photograph: Bettmann/CORBIS “To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth....” In quasi-Biblical cadences, Steinbeck introduces to reader to the wretched of the earth, the Joad family, dispossessed farmers fleeing dust bowl conditions. Tom Joad has just been paroled from prison. Simultaneously, his family have lost their farm to the bank. The Joads are about to set out west in search of work, down Route 66 to California, the promised land. Nothing goes right. The Joads are exploited, bullied and torn apart.

Their grandparents die en route, and have to be buried by the roadside. As the family begins to disintegrate, it is the women who are strong, like the pioneers of the 19th century. Old Ma Joad takes over. “Women can change better than a man,” she says. Tom gets implicated in another killing, and must flee into a landscape bereft of hope and opportunity. In the controversial conclusion to a bleak and pitiless narrative, Tom’s sister, Rose of Sharon Joad, loses her daughter and offers her breast to a fellow Okie who is dying of starvation. “She squirmed closer,” writes Steinbeck, “and pulled his head close. ‘There!’ she said. ‘There.’” The novel ends with Rose of Sharon’s mysterious smile at this shocking gesture of self-sacrifice. A note on the text The Grapes of Wrath grew out of a series of newspaper articles on the California migrant workers entitled The Harvest Gypsies that Steinbeck published in the San Francisco News (illustrated with photographs by Dorothea Lange) from 5 to 12 October, 1936. Writing at the height of the Depression, Steinbeck was on fire with his subject.

Like some of the greatest novels in this series, the book was written in a white heat. He said, “I want to put a tag of shame on the greedy bastards who are responsible [for the Great Depression].” The novel – 200,000 words on 165 cramped, handwritten pages in a 12in x 18in lined ledger book – was completed in five months at the rate of 2,000 words a day. “Never worked so hard in my life nor so long before,” he told a friend. It was, said Steinbeck, his ambition to “rip a reader’s nerves to rags” from page to page. To achieve added drama and tempo, he borrowed the jump-cut technique of Dos Passos’ USA trilogy ( No 58 in this series ).

At his wife Carol’s suggestion, he took his title from The Battle Hymn of the Republic by Julia Ward Howe: “Mine Eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord/ He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored…” Steinbeck told his literary agent that he liked the title “because it is a march, and this book is a kind of march – because it is in our own revolutionary tradition.” On 26 October, 1938, Steinbeck reported he was “so dizzy” he could “hardly see the page.” He scrawled “END” in large letters on the manuscript, and then wrote in his journal “Finished this day, and I hope to God it’s good.” The first reactions of Steinbeck’s agent and editor were excited. The Grapes of Wrath was rushed into print, going from typescript to page proof in four months, and published on 14 April 1939 by the Viking Press in New York.

The novel at once became a national sensation, possibly the most reviewed and publicised, and even the most controversial, American novel of the 20th century – discussed on the radio, denounced by angry readers, and even banned in some libraries. The Associated Farmers of California were particularly incensed, complaining about “a pack of lies” and “Jewish propaganda”, though Steinbeck was not Jewish. A certain Ruth Comfort Mitchell attempted to refute the novel in a vindication of California’s treatment of its immigrant workers, in a now-forgotten book entitled Of Human Kindness . Joining battle from the other side, both Pearl Buck, author of The Good Earth, and the First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, who said she never thought the novel was exaggerated, supported Steinbeck. As did the US Senate, which judged that, if anything, the novelist had underestimated the violation of human rights on the west coast. Pinterest Despite, or perhaps because of, this furore The Grapes of Wrath became the best-selling book of 1939, selling almost half a million copies (at $2.75 a copy) in the first year of publication alone.

In 1940, the novel also won the Pulitzer prize for fiction, and would subsequently be taught in schools and colleges across the United States. In that year, John Ford directed a hastily put-together movie of the same name starring Henry Fonda, a rare case of an opportunistic movie equalling its fictional source. When Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1962, the prize committee identified this “great work” as a principal reason for awarding the prize. Not everyone was a Steinbeck fan. For example, F Scott Fitzgerald ( no 51 in this series ), writing to his friend the critic Edmund Wilson, described Steinbeck as “a rather cagey cribber”. Posterity has taken a different view. The Grapes of Wrath features on many “100 best” lists, including TIME , the Modern Library , Le Monde , and the BBC’s Big Read of 2003. Informal estimates suggest that it has sold about 15 million copies in the 75 years since its publication. There’s an American classic for you.

Three more from John Steinbeck Tortilla Flat (1935); Of Mice and Men (1937); East of Eden (1952). 'Grapes Of Wrath' And The Politics of Book Burning : NPR 'Grapes Of Wrath' And The Politics of Book Burning Embed Embed 'Grapes Of Wrath' And The Politics of Book Burning 'Grapes Of Wrath' And The Politics of Book Burning Embed Embed Enlarge this image Clell Pruett burns a copy of The Grapes Of Wrath as Bill Camp and another leader of the Associated Farmers stand by. At the time this photograph was taken, Pruett had not read the novel. Years later, after he read the book at the behest of Rick Wartzman, Pruett declared that he had no regrets about burning it. Kern County Museum hide caption toggle caption Kern County Museum Clell Pruett burns a copy of The Grapes Of Wrath as Bill Camp and another leader of the Associated Farmers stand by. At the time this photograph was taken, Pruett had not read the novel. Years later, after he read the book at the behest of Rick Wartzman, Pruett declared that he had no regrets about burning it.

Kern County Museum Rick Wartzman's Obscene In The Extreme examines the banning of The Grapes Of Wrath in Kern County, Calif. hide caption toggle caption Read an excerpt . Sept. 29 marks the beginning of the American Library Association's annual "Banned Books Week," a commemoration of all the books that have ever been removed from library shelves and classrooms. Politics, religion, sex, witchcraft — people give a lot of reasons for wanting to ban books, says Judith Krug of the ALA, but most often the bannings are about fear. "They're not afraid of the book; they're afraid of the ideas," says Krug. "The materials that are challenged and banned say something about the human condition." John Steinbeck's 1939 classic, The Grapes Of Wrath, which chronicles an Oklahoma family's hapless migration westward, is a perfect example. The book was an immediate best-seller around the country, but it was also banned and burned in a number of places, including Kern County, Calif. — the endpoint of the Joad family's migration.

Though fictional, Steinbeck's novel was firmly rooted in real events: Three years before the book was published a drought in the Dust Bowl states forced hundreds of thousands of migrants to California. Penniless and homeless, many landed in Kern County. When the book came out, some of the powers that be in the county thought that they had been portrayed unfairly; they felt that Steinbeck hadn't given them credit for the effort they were making to help the migrants. One member of the county board of supervisors denounced the book as a "libel and lie." In August 1939, by a vote of 4 to 1, the board approved a resolution banning The Grapes Of Wrath from county libraries and schools. Article continues after sponsorship Rick Wartzman, author of the new book Obscene In The Extreme, says what happened in Kern County illustrates the deep divide between left and right in California in the 1930s. One powerful local player who pushed for the ban was Bill Camp, head of the local Associated Farmers, a group of big landowners who were avid opponents of organized labor. Camp and his colleagues knew how to get a bill passed in the state Legislature — and they also knew how to be physical.

"They knew how to work with tire irons, pick handles and bricks," says Wartzman. "Things could get really ugly and violent." Camp wanted to publicize the county's opposition to The Grapes Of Wrath. Convinced that many migrants were also offended by their depiction in the novel, he recruited one of his workers, Clell Pruett, to burn the book. Pruett had never read the novel, but he had heard a radio program about it that made him angry, and so he readily agreed to take part in what Wartzman describes as a "photo op." The photo shows Camp and another leader of the Associated Farmers standing by as Pruett holds the book above a trash can and sets it on fire. Meanwhile, local librarian Gretchen Knief was working quietly to get the ban overturned. At the risk of losing her job, she stood up to the county supervisors and wrote a letter asking them to reverse their decision. "It's such a vicious and dangerous thing to begin," she wrote. "Besides, banning books is so utterly hopeless and futile. Ideas don't die because a book is forbidden reading." Knief's argument may have been eloquent, but it didn't work.

The supervisors upheld the ban, and it remained in effect for a year and a half. Still, says Krug, the censorship of The Grapes Of Wrath was a key event in the creation of the Library Bill of Rights, the statement Krug describes as ensuring that "as American citizens we have the right to access whatever information we wish without anyone looking over our shoulders. ... that we have the right to utilize this information once we have acquired it." Excerpt: 'Obscene In The Extreme' September 29, 20082:46 PM ET Rick Wartzman The lights dimmed and dimmed some more, and darkness fell upon the Big Room. No one talked or even dared to breathe too loudly. The children had been shushed, whispers stifled, and cigarettes snuffed. The only sound to be heard was the thwack-thwack-thwack of limestone water dripping onto rock. It is impossible to know, of course, what those in the crowd felt as this black blanket swallowed them completely, engulfing the afterglow and playing tricks on their eyes.

They had come here, to Carlsbad Caverns, to vacation and take their minds off their workaday concerns; and for some, sitting 750 feet below the surface of the earth, surveying a gargantuan stalagmite known as the Rock of Ages, this undoubtedly was the high point of their trip. Before the lights had gone out, the tourists had soaked in the spectacle: several million years old, wrinkled and tinted with orange, rising up nearly forty feet, as huge as a house. The Rock of Ages was such a wonder that Robert Ripley, Mr. Believe It or Not, had visited this spot just weeks earlier to make a radio broadcast, his voice carried upward by telephone cables and then out across the country by CBS. And yet one can imagine that for others, descending deep into the ground and watching the last trace of light vanish would have brought feelings not of joy and adventure, but of angst and foreboding. It wouldn't have taken much of a leap, in those thirty seconds when all was quiet and still, to see that darkness was settling upon the world as well. It was an uneasy time, late summer 1939.

Hitler's troops were amassed along the fifteen-hundred-mile German-Polish border. The Soviets and Japanese clashed along Mongolia's Khalka River. And Franco was ruthlessly consolidating his power in Spain. At home, America teetered on the edge of war. The worst of the Depression was over, but the economy was still sick. The Roosevelt Recession — in which industrial production had tumbled by 40 percent, unemployment had jumped by four million, and stock prices had plunged by nearly 50 percent — was barely more than a year past. The jobless rate hovered above 17 percent, and personal income and total economic output were no higher than they had been a decade before. Even the national pastime had taken on a melancholy cast: in June, Yankees slugger Lou Gehrig had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, cutting short his extraordinary career. He may have just described himself as "the luckiest man on the face of this earth," but it seemed like an awfully tough break for a thirty-six-year-old dubbed "the Iron Horse." As for politics, things were as crazy as ever.

President Roosevelt's popularity had ebbed in the last few years, and a volatile mixture of -isms was boiling and bubbling all over the place — Communism, Socialism, Fascism, Coughlinism, Longism, Townsendism. It was hard to tell sometimes which one might slosh out of the pot and stick. Of all the eyes staring into the cave, among the weariest must have been Gretchen Knief's. She had trekked to New Mexico by way of theSouth and was on her way back home, to California's San Joaquin Valley, where she was the chief librarian for Kern County. She was a tall woman, impeccably dressed, her smile warm. No one would have called the thirty-seven-year-old a beauty, and she could be a little awkward at times. But it was an endearing awkwardness, and everybody admired her smarts. Knief had spent a portion of her trip examining libraries in Florida and Louisiana, and she had walked away feeling pleased with how Kern County's far-flung network of seventy-one branches, many of which she had single-handedly expanded, stacked up by comparison. But pressures were mounting too.

Kern's main library was housed in the basement of the county courthouse in Bakersfield, in quarters so cramped that some of its materials were buried beneath old lighting fixtures, furniture, and other bric-a-brac. A proposed $300,000 bond issue to finance a new facility was scheduled to go before the voters in the fall. But who knew what they'd decide, given the budget squeeze afflicting the county? The situation showed no signs of easing, either, the way people were still streaming in to California's heartland, taxing public services of all kinds. "Authorities Predict Increase in Migrant Flow to Kern Soon," read the headline in the August 7 edition of the Bakersfield Californian. The exodus had been underway for nearly a decade, with as many as four hundred thousand folks from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas, Missouri, and other states flocking to California in search of a better life. They were by no means exclusively poor. But many were. And the plight of these human tumbleweeds, as one observer had labeled them, had by now worked its way into the national consciousness. Leading periodicals had sent their correspondents to rural outposts up and down Highway 99 to chronicle the suffering.

"Uncle Sam Has His Own Refugee Problem," the Providence Journal declared during the spring. "Lured to the West, They Find Misery, Squalor, Disease." Collier's magazine put it this way: "Perhaps the native and adopted sons of California pitched their voices a note or two too high when they warbled praises of the Golden State. Anyway, they got the idea across, and now they're sorry. An army is marching into California — an army made up of penniless unemployed, desperately seeking Utopia. 'Here we are,' say the invaders, 'what're you going to do about us?' And nobody knows the answer." That may have been a tad hyperbolic, but coming up with answers was in no way simple. Kern County, for one, had seen its population swell by more than 60 percent in the last five years, and although health officers had cleaned up the squatter camps that once plagued the area, many migrants were still living in slums with inadequate sewers and drains, ramshackle houses, and litter-strewn dirt roads that would turn to mud after a hard winter rain. Who, though, was culpable for such conditions? Were they the fault of a grudging local government?

Or were the newcomers themselves guilty somehow? Many suggested as much. The migrant community in Kern was branded as being full of "drunks, chiselers, exploiters and social leeches" — and that was in an official county report that had just been released. The language used on the street was even more blunt; in the lobby of a Bakersfield movie theater, a sign was posted: "Negroes and Okies Upstairs." An alternative view, however, had also found its voice. This one laid the blame for the migrants' deprivation at the door of California agriculture, an industry that since the late nineteenth century had been defined by one main thing: its enormity. The state's giant landowners had made a travesty of the Jeffersonian ideal of 160 acres, assembling dominions that ballooned to one thousand times or more that size. "We no longer raise wheat here," said one grower. "We manufacture it." This wasn't family farming; it was agribusiness.

And with it came a caste system in which relatively few got rich while many remained mired in the worst sort of poverty: Chinese in the 1870s, Japanese two decades later, Hindustanis early in the new century, Mexicans and Filipinos during and after World War I. Joining this ethnic parade were Armenians and Portuguese, Italians and Swiss — wave after wave of low-priced labor. Among the leviathan landholders were those who took care of their workers, some patronizingly, others with a genuine measure of respect. But many big farmers regarded their hands as expendable — "beasts of the field," in the words of an 1888 edition of the Kern County Californian. In many ways, things hadn't changed much in the fifty years since that description had been written, and with the Okies and Arkies now faring so terribly, social critics were pointing their fingers at California's agricultural elite. The most articulate and powerful of the finger-pointers was author John Steinbeck, whose book The Grapes of Wrath had not only leapt onto the best-seller list after its publication in April but was also well on its way to becoming seared into the public's imagination forever.

Darryl Zanuck was already busy with the film version of the story, starring Henry Fonda, and Woody Guthrie would soon record his ode to Steinbeck's protagonist, Tom Joad: Wherever little children are hungry and cry / Wherever people ain't free. / Wherever men are fightin' for their rights, / That's where I'm gonna be, Ma. / That's where I'm a gonna be. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt had called her reading of The Grapes of Wrath "an unforgettable experience." And in the coming months, the president would tell the nation that he, too, had read of the Joads' journey from the bone-dry plains of Oklahoma to the bountiful lands of California, where they and others toiled away for a pittance and found themselves wishing "them big farmers wouldn' plague us so." "There are 500,000 Americans," the president said, "that live in the covers of that book." By 1940, The Grapes of Wrath would be invoked so often that it almost seemed to cheapen the novel. Good Samaritans, looking to raise money to aid the migrants, would hold "Grapes of Wrath" parties.

The union seeking to organize California's farm fields — the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers of America — recruited five young Broadway actors to tour the West and Southwest, with ticket sales going into UCAPAWA's coffers. The troupe's name: The Grapes of Wrath Players. Meanwhile, pundits of all stripes would reference the Joads in articles and speeches, as if they were real: "Meet the Joad Family," "The Joad Family in Kern County," "What's Being Done About the Joads?" "The Joads on Strike." Men began to wear a hat called the "Joad Cap." Knief peered into the inky cavern, and slowly the lights came up, like a sunrise in the distance. Then a ranger's voice washed over the Big Room: Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee; Let the water and the blood, From Thy wounded side which flowed, Be of sin the double cure; Save from wrath and make me pure.

In that very instant, it is conceivable that Knief and all the others assembled in the Big Room let their worries — the weight resting on "our troubled and confused generation," as she once expressed it — melt away. Whether that sense of tranquility lasted very long is another matter. As Knief headed back to Bakersfield, her vacation done, she motored along Route 66, the same stretch of highway on which the migrants "scuttled like bugs to the westward," as Steinbeck wrote. The Mother Road, as she was known, was the path to California's promise. Knief counted herself a Steinbeck devotee, having briefly met him during one of his research outings to the area. And on the eve of the publication of The Grapes of Wrath, she had lauded him as "one of our major creative writers in America today," a literary force on par with Faulkner, Hemingway, Saroyan, and Dos Passos. In "The Reading Hour," a column that she wrote for the Bakersfield paper, Knief had also noted that this tale of migratory labor was bound to be "of more than passing interest" to local readers.

As she'd soon discover, that would prove to be quite an understatement. From the book Obscene in the Extreme by Rick Wartzman. Reprinted by arrangement with PublicAffairs, a member of the Perseus Books Group. Copyright © 2008. Related NPR Stories NEA Big Read NEA Big Read The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed. About the Author John Steinbeck (1902-1968) The California farm town of Salinas welcomed John Steinbeck into the world on February 27, 1902, but the welcome eventually wore out. From an early age, his schoolteacher mother imparted a love of learning and language. From his bankrupt father, Steinbeck acquired a hypersensitivity to social nuances, a profound empathy for the underprivileged, and a strong work ethic that rarely left him. After receiving his diploma from Salinas High in 1919, he alternated work as a field hand with sporadic attendance at Stanford University. His fourth novel, Tortilla Flat (1935), made his name as a writer.

Then, drawing on his strengths—deep regard for his native California and empathy for his fellow hard workers—Steinbeck spent years researching and a miraculous five months writing The Grapes of Wrath. Published in 1939, it won him both the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and decades of enmity from his hometown, where he was viewed as a traitor to his (middle) class. In a span of three months between 1939–1940, critically and commercially successful films of both The Grapes of Wrath and the short novel Of Mice and Men came out. During World War II, The New York Herald Tribune signed him on as a war correspondent and he filed dispatches from England and the Mediterranean. After the war, Steinbeck left California for New York and cast around for a subject that would engage him as fully as The Grapes of Wrath had. He divided his attention among science writing, journalism, screenplays, and shorter novels.

Finally, in 1952, following the collapse of his second marriage and the sudden death of his beloved friend, marine biologist Ed "Doc" Ricketts, Steinbeck wrote his way imaginatively back to California for East of Eden, among his strongest and most enduring novels. The 1962 memoir Travels with Charley freshened and deepened Steinbeck's already wide readership. The highest honors were given to him: the Nobel Prize for literature in 1962, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964, and appointment to the National Council on the Arts in 1966. Steinbeck died in New York City in 1968 and was buried with little fanfare in Salinas. Today, the handsome National Steinbeck Center anchors Salinas's downtown revival, complete with research library and a museum featuring the original camper truck from Travels with Charley. Migrants still pick most of the fruit in California's Central Valley, but they come from Central America instead of Oklahoma, and agriculture has a new partner driving the region's economy: literary tourism. Get involved with NEA Big Read!

The Grapes of Wrath (1940) - IMDb IMDb 17 January 2017 4:34 PM, UTC NEWS There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error The Grapes of Wrath ( 1940 ) Approved | A poor Midwest family is forced off of their land. They travel to California, suffering the misfortunes of the homeless in the Great Depression. Director: Nunnally Johnson (screen play), John Steinbeck (based on the novel by) Stars: a list of 47 titles created 18 Aug 2011 a list of 21 titles created 17 Mar 2012 a list of 33 titles created 11 Dec 2014 a list of 35 titles created 09 May 2015 a list of 42 titles created 2 weeks ago Title: The Grapes of Wrath (1940) 8.1/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site?

Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Won 2 Oscars. Another 7 wins & 5 nominations. See more awards » Videos Three World War II veterans return home to small-town America to discover that they and their families have been irreparably changed. Director: William Wyler Fred Dobbs and Bob Curtin, two Americans searching for work in Mexico, convince an old prospector to help them mine for gold in the Sierra Madre Mountains. Director: John Huston A naive man is appointed to fill a vacancy in the United States Senate. His plans promptly collide with political corruption, but he doesn't back down. Director: Frank Capra A private detective takes on a case that involves him with three eccentric criminals, a gorgeous liar, and their quest for a priceless statuette. Director: John Huston A spoiled heiress running away from her family is helped by a man who is actually a reporter in need of a story. Director: Frank Capra An ex-prize fighter turned longshoreman struggles to stand up to his corrupt union bosses. Director: Elia Kazan A stark, perverse story of murder, kidnapping, and police corruption in a Mexican border town.

Director: Orson Welles An ingenue insinuates herself into the company of an established but aging stage actress and her circle of theater friends. Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz An allegorical tale about a man fighting the good and evil within him. Both sides are made flesh - one a sophisticated woman he is attracted to and the other his wife. Director: F.W. Murnau When Union spies steal an engineer's beloved locomotive, he pursues it single-handedly and straight through enemy lines. Directors: Clyde Bruckman, Buster Keaton Stars: Buster Keaton, Marion Mack, Glen Cavender A self-conscious bride is tormented by the memory of her husband's dead first wife. Director: Alfred Hitchcock A senator, who became famous for killing a notorious outlaw, returns for the funeral of an old friend and tells the truth about his deed. Director: John Ford Edit Storyline Tom Joad returns to his home after a jail sentence to find his family kicked out of their farm due to foreclosure. He catches up with them on his Uncles farm, and joins them the next day as they head for California and a new life... Hopefully.

Written by Colin Tinto <cst@imdb.com> See All (117) » Taglines: The thousands who have read the book will know why WE WILL NOT SELL ANY CHILDREN TICKETS to see this picture! See more » Genres: 15 March 1940 (USA) See more » Also Known As: Mono (Western Electric Mirrophonic Recording) Color: Did You Know? Trivia The production had a fake working title, "Highway 66", so that the shoot of the controversial novel would not be affected by union problems. Much of the dire straits portrayed in the film continued during and after the release of the movie. See more » Goofs The same shot, from slightly different angles, of the Joads' truck crossing the desert at night is used twice, showing a single large cactus in the foreground and three sets of lights in a row on a mountain in the distance. See more » Quotes She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain (uncredited) User Reviews John Ford's stark portrayal of a poor family in the depression remains one of the most moving films in history.

(Luoyang, China) – See all my reviews The Grapes of Wrath is the story of the Joad family, who are run off of their land in Oklahoma because of drought and poverty. I think that one of the most striking elements of this movie is the black and white cinematography. Obviously, there wasn't a lot of variation on this particular subject in 1940, but especially today, the lack of color enhances the feelings of poverty and desperation and emptiness due to the family's loss of their home. In this way, because it would not be nearly as noticeable in 1940 as it is today, this time-enhanced effect of the black and white film stock has allowed for the film's impact to actually grow with time. Henry Fonda plays the part of Tom Joad, a young member of the family who is released from prison at the beginning of the film, only to find that his family has been driven from their home and is staying at his uncle's house until they can figure out what to do about their sudden homelessness. It is by pure coincidence that Tom was released early on good behavior, otherwise he may very well never have seen his family again.

He finds them in a state of near desperation, as they begin more and more to realize the predicament that they are in. Their trek across half of the country, on their way to California to assume jobs that they've heard about, provides for a substantial portion of the plot and is extremely well-structured. The family encounters every hardship imaginable on this journey, from family members dying to their struggle to feed themselves to their rickety old truck constantly breaking down. They run into disillusioned people who claim that they've been to California and there are really no jobs there, at least not nearly as many as there are people going to look for them. They are periodically and derogatorily referred to as `Okies,' a term which places them in a broad category of poor folks driven from there homes in middle America who are traveling to the coast to get jobs that aren't there. There is so much doubt and hardship presented that it is never really certain whether they really will find jobs. The audience is never able to assume a happy ending, because there is so much contrary foreshadowing throughout the film.

The struggles do not abate once the family reaches California and takes up shaky residence in residential areas that would be more accurately referred to as shanty towns, and the rest of the film is dominated by the family's efforts to survive in a new and unfamiliar place, while working for wages that are barely sufficient to prevent starvation. Ma Joad spends the majority of the film stressing the importance of keeping the family together, seeing it as the only thing that they really had left, but this is eventually set aside in favor of each member of the family not only surviving but also flourishing, which provides for one of the many powerful messages that the film delivers. The Grapes of Wrath is not exactly an edge of your seat film, but it is a shockingly realistic portrayal of the suffering that so many people and families experienced during the Great Depression. The performances are flawless, and the experience is not only powerful and moving but also educational. It's no secret that most people do not watch movies to learn, but there comes a point, at least once in a great while, when a person should watch a film that requires a little mental thought processing, and in such cases, The Grapes of Wrath is an excellent choice.

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Question: Who wrote the 1939 novel ‘The Grapes of Wrath’?
Answer: John Steinbeck