Versions of the Grapes of Wrath

170 Anne Ruggles Gere 17 Dorothea Lange to “The Boss”: Versions of The Grapes of Wrath Anne Ruggles Gere University of Michigan hat I hate about reading these books,” wrote a student in my class, “is knowing that I’ll never be able to write anything this Wgood. It makes me want to stop writing altogether.” Scott was a student in an American literature class that was designed to help students learn to write about literature as they became more conversant with their own literary heritage. We had just finished Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street, and discussion had focused on her highly effective style. Students had noticed her powerful descriptions, such as the picture she draws of the family members’ hair; the way she uses dialogue that sounds like real children would speak it; and the subtlety with which she reveals complex and difficult situations. We had talked about her growing reputation as a writer, and her contribution to an ever expanding definition of “American.” It was in his reading log that Scott expressed his frustration. The effect of reading and discussing Cisneros had been to convince him that he could never do as well. He sounded like a playground hoopster who wanted to throw away his basketball when he realized that he would never be able to dribble behind his back and jam the way Michael Jordan could. As I reread Scott’s comment, I mused about what I wanted students to take away from my classes. Certainly I wanted them to know something about the historical sweep and variety of the American literary tradition; I wanted them to become familiar with the contributions of writers as diverse as Emerson, Dickinson, and Morrison. I wanted them to understand a variety of genres and styles. And, while I didn’t aim to inculcate a particular standard of taste, I wanted my students to be able to distinguish between good and less good writing. But most of all, I wanted them to continue reading and writing. If reading Cisneros made Scott feel like throwing away his pen, then I needed to think again about what I was doing. Dorothea Lange to “The Boss”: Versions of The Grapes of Wrath 171 One of the words we English teachers often use is “appreciate.” We want our students to learn to appreciate and value literature as we do. Thinking about that word “appreciate,” I began to see one source of Scott’s frustration. Appreciation implies passivity—seeing and valu- ing quality, understanding and prizing significance, recognizing and admiring certain features. Learning to admire a work has its importance, but I didn’t want to achieve this goal at the price of convincing students that they should give up writing because they would never be able to achieve the effects of the published authors they were reading. If I wanted my students to understand fully the “making” of American literature, I needed them to see themselves as potential makers of literature. This led me to think about pairing texts in new ways. I was al- ready putting together combinations like Gatsby and Passing, but I realized that other forms of pairing might demythologize writing for students. I could create combinations of texts that would help students see how writers revise as they search for ways to tell a given story. I could show students how the same story gets retold by multiple authors. I could demonstrate how authors influence, quote, and borrow from each another. Perhaps I could sneak in the term “intertextuality” along the way, but mainly I’d show students how ideas circulate from one writer to another. Instead of seeing American literature as something to wor- ship from afar, students might be able to imagine themselves as potential contributors to American literature, as writers who could add the next chapter to an ongoing story. In response to Scott’s complaint, I redesigned my American literature course to make a variety of authors and their work more acces- sible to students. One particularly successful part of the course focuses on John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, a familiar and frequently taught novel in American literature classes. The time devoted to this section varies depending upon what else I’m trying to accomplish, but it usu- ally takes several weeks. The first texts I show students are visual rather than verbal because so much of Grapes bears traces of images that made an impres- sion on Steinbeck as he was writing the novel. Dorothea Lange’s photograph of a young migrant mother nursing her baby was featured on the front cover of Their Blood Is Strong, a collection of Steinbeck’s essays about migrant workers. Steinbeck knew Lange and her photographs well. He wrote affectionately to her shortly before her death, and six pieces in his seven-part article series on migrant workers were accompanied by Lange’s photographs of migrant families, roadside scenes, and gov- ernment camps. Indeed much of the attention Steinbeck’s newspaper 172 Anne Ruggles Gere articles received can be attributed to Lange’s compelling images. I also show students photographs by Horace Bristol, a photographer whose work appeared frequently in Life magazine. Steinbeck and Bristol worked together on relief efforts in Visalia, California, when floods stranded more than five thousand migrant families in 1938. We give particular attention to Bristol’s pictures of a flooded boxcar home and of a young mother with her baby, because both a flooded boxcar and a nursing mother play such a significant role in the conclusion of the novel. Initially, in looking at photographs by Lange and Bristol, the class focuses on narrating the stories told by these images. Both orally and in writing, students develop narratives about the people portrayed in the pictures. I ask them questions such as “What would this young mother say if you interviewed her right after this photograph was taken?” and give them prompts such as “Write a diary entry in the voice of someone who has been living in this boxcar home.” After the class has begun to imagine itself in the lives of migrants, I provide some background on the relationship between these particular photographers and the author of Grapes. In addition to talking about the Lange-Steinbeck connection, I explain that Steinbeck and Bristol had traveled together throughout California, collecting stories and photographs among the migrant farm workers. They originally planned a picture-and-text book about migrant workers, but a few months after the Visalia flood, Steinbeck backed out of the project, explaining that he planned to write a novel instead. Woody Guthrie’s music enters the class next. Guthrie, the Depres- sion-era folk singer known best for “This Land is Your Land,” grew up in Oklahoma and, like the Joad family in Grapes, was displaced from the land and migrated to California. Guthrie gave voice to the struggles of migrant families with his songs and saw himself as one of “the people.” He rewrote religious hymns and popular songs with lyrics rooted in the viewpoint of those who suffered most during the Depres- sion. With lines like, “I’m just a wandering worker, I go from town to town / And police make it hard / Wherever I may go / And I ain’t got no home in this world anymore” and “Rich man took my home and drove me from my door / My wife took down and died, upon the cabin floor,” he called attention to the suffering of migrant workers (Klein 118 and 124). In March 1940, a few months after Grapes was published, Guthrie sang at a “Grapes of Wrath” benefit sponsored by the John Steinbeck Committee for Agricultural Workers in New York. In addition to developing support for migrant workers, this concert introduced folk music, and Woody Guthrie in particular, to a mainstream audience, Dorothea Lange to “The Boss”: Versions of The Grapes of Wrath 173 so that his protest songs began to enter the popular consciousness at the same time that Grapes was emerging as a best-seller. Later in 1940, Steinbeck wrote this description of Guthrie as part of an introduction to a book of protest songs: Harsh voiced and nasal, his guitar hanging like a tire iron on a rusty rim, there is nothing sweet about Woody, and there is nothing sweet about the songs he sings. But there is something more important for those who will listen. There is the will of the people to endure and fight against oppression. I think we call this the American spirit. (qtd. in Klein 118) Listening to some of Guthrie’s lyrics in his harsh voice offers my students another version of the story told by the photographs of Lange and Bristol. In addition to providing my students with some background on Guthrie, I ask them to compare the visual and musical versions of the migrants’ stories with questions such as “What differences and simi- larities do you notice between the two stories?” and “What, if any, significance do you attach to Guthrie’s life experience as compared with Lange and Bristol, who looked at migrant families from the other side of a camera?” The next texts I share with the class are drawn from The Harvest Gypsies, the collection of seven essays Steinbeck wrote for the San Fran- cisco News in 1936. In addition to observations drawn from his travels to migrant worker camps with Tom Collins, manager of the first gov- ernment camp for migrants, Steinbeck drew upon the reports that Collins submitted to the Resettlement Administration and upon docu- ments collected by the Farm Security Administration.

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