Grapes of Wrath

I just finished reading "Grapes of Wrath" .. the 2014 re-published "75th Anniversary" issue.

Has it been three quarters of a century since John Steinbeck wrote this accolade to The Human Condition?

I know only one thing; this was the most difficult novel to read in my (mumble-mumble) decades of reading everything I could get my hands on.  I usually read a book a day.  This one took me sixteen (16) days to complete its reading.

It's not that it's hard to read ... it's a beautifully written story about Hard Times in America.

And that's just what made it so DAMN hard to digest.

Anyone who can witness this difficult period in American history, learn how hard-scrabble honest folks were deliberately starved to death (by their countrymen) without a tear in his eye .. well, I don't want to know him.

It wasn't that "people" weren't capable of being sympathetic to the folks they called "Okies" (as a term of derision; they perforce considered them subhuman, because if they didn't, they might have to give up their own sustenance to support staring Americans.)  It's just that everyone was frightened during the Great Depression about the very really possibility that they were just one paycheck away from starvation and destitution, for themselves and their children.

People were thrown off their homes by armed deputies; a bulldozer would come through and crush their shacks to rubble, and then continue to plow the entire property because The Bank had to make a profit, or the bankers would find themselves on the road, too.

Damn!  I'm glad I wasn't alive during the Thirties!

I saw the movie, with Henry Fonda, years ago.  But that has little to do with the book (except for one scene).  The Joads were images in monochrome there.  In the book, they became real to me.

I've been a critic of "Social Support" programs, because in the Modern Era they often seem nothing more than a Political Boondoggle.

But it could happen again, and in a rich country (which America was NOT, in the Great Depression), I now understand why there has to be some kind of .. at least a "BootStrap" program for folks who really want to work, who are to proud to accept charity, and find themselves having to do "The Hard Thing" because ... that's all they have.

So, what's the country going to be like in 20#?  See here for a slightly different viewpoint, in a modern version of The Grapes of Wrath.

Teaser Quote:

Another young American soldier is being buried while family and friends watch, having been killed by an Improvised Explosive Device while attempting to suppress "insurgents"—in Ohio. He was trying to keep them from shooting the bulldozer drivers demolishing suburban neighborhoods, clearing the land for a "return to nature" under a United Nations mandate.

(H/T: Larry Codrea)

Oh, you have got to go reread Grapes of Wrath!