The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath is one of the most classic movies in movie history. It was directed in 1940 by John Ford, and was based of the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by John Steinbeck written 1939. The movie is an accurate historical depiction of the experience of migrant workers during the Great Depression, when the vicious dust bowls destroyed wheat farms throoughout Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, and the Dakotas displacing tens of thousands of farmers. The weather together with the economy widened the gap between small farm owners and the big agribusinesses that gobbled up smaller farms and exploited farm laborers. Victims of the drought looked to California for refuge and a brighter future, only to find, more misery and hard times. The Grapes of Wrath follows the Joad family and their struggle to get out of Oklahoma and make it to California. The story touches on themes that have surrounded our class discussion on the idea of home, travel, modernity, and has biblical undertones that can’t be ignored.
The dust bowls as well as weakened economic conditions forced tens of thousands of farmers from the mid west to leave their farms and homes behind them and search for better conditions in California. Although for some leaving behind their home and all they knew was too much to bear, and they were committed to staying despite the probable chance of death. This sentiment can be seen through the character Muley Graves, who refused to leave his land and now wanders through the sharecropper’s houses hiding from the tenants. Tom Joad, the story’s protagonist, returns home after serving a four year jail sentence for homicide, unaware of the troubles that have plagued the sharecroppers of the area as well as his family since he left, finds Muley hiding in his family’s house. Muley describes that everybody has been evicted from their land by the bank, and that they have all left to go to California, except him. The film then...