The Struggle of Migrant Workers: Subaltern Perspectives in Steinbeck’S the Grapes of Wrath P

Marian Quest – A Bi-annual Multidisciplinary Research Journal. Vol.. 6 ISSN 2249 - 7145 December 2017 THE STRUGGLE OF MIGRANT WORKERS: SUBALTERN PERSPECTIVES IN STEINBECK’S THE GRAPES OF WRATH P. Michael Arokiasamy, Department of English, Don Bosco College, Keela Eral, Thoothukudi, Tamilnadu, India Abstract The Grapes of Wrath is an eye-opening novel that deals with the struggle for survival of migrant workers in the western United States. It was the best-selling novel of the year and won the Pulitzer Prize. The most part of the novel focuses on the human experience of the mass migration. Although the novel predominantly follows one family, the Joads, Steinbeck did not want the struggles of the Joads to be considered as an isolated event, specific only to a particular family. It is a global problem. The powerful oppress the powerless. Most migrant workers face the similar situation across the globe. This novel makes known the plight and difficulties of the migrant workers to all. It recognizes oppression of the weak and the subordination of migrant workers. In this paper therefore, I attempt at exploring the subaltern perspectives in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath by analyzing the various struggles of migrant workers of the novel. Keywords: Subaltern, migrants, discrimination, oppression, emancipation, depression, liberation, proletarian revolt. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck is a classic novel noted for its expressive equality and fascinating writing techniques. It won the Pulitzer Prize and was the best-selling novel of the year. Steinbeck’s migration saga remains relevant as a piece of (dramatized) social analysis. It is essentially a road novel about the Joads, a poor Midwestern migrant farming family. Throughout the novel, the Joads fight to keep their family unbroken while fleeing the 1930s Oklahoma Dustbowl in the hope of farm work in California. But once the Joads begin to migrate, the family begins to crumble. The Joad grandparents aren’t able to cope with life outside their native Oklahoma, and they both die early in the novel. A brother-in-law gets fed up with the itinerant farm work, so he leaves the family and his pregnant wife to seek other opportunities. The main character, oldest son Tom Joad, gets tangled in a labor clash and is forced to abandon the family and live in hiding. The disintegration of the Joad family demonstrates that, although we are all subject to pressures and influences that bring us together and push us apart, migrants face unique and strong centrifugal forces that work against family unity. 1 Marian Quest – A Bi-annual Multidisciplinary Research Journal. Vol.. 6 ISSN 2249 - 7145 December 2017 The novel begins with a description of the conditions in Dust Bowl Oklahoma that ruined crops and instigated massive foreclosures on farmland. Tom Joad, the protagonist has been released early from the penitentiary on parole after serving four years of his seven year sentence. Tom, once released, begins the trip back home to his family on their forty acre farming estate. Tom, through the help of a truck driver, is given a ride to the general area of his house. It is interesting to see how Tom manages to get a ride with the truck driver, who under normal circumstances, would not have given any rides to hitch hikers, simply due to a sticker on his cab which reads “No Riders.” Tom however, through astute reasoning skills, is able to get what he needs. Through his actions in the opening scenes, we learn a little bit about Tom Joad, and what he is like as a person. Once Tom is dropped off, he meets an old minister named Jim Casey. Jim’s inner struggle before he joins Tom in accompanying him back to his house is unspeakable. Meanwhile, the Joads’ were being expelled from their house by the owner of the land, and were making plans for a trip to move in with Uncle Tom. Upon the arrival of Tom and Jim, they are quick to discover, through the knowledge of Muley, an old friend of Tom, that his family has already left, but were unable to reach him to let him know what was happening to them. Tom and Jim eventually meet the family at Uncle Tom’s cabin and are greeted with open arms. Soon after their arrival, the family is once again forced to leave. After purchasing a truck, the family heads for California in search of a home and work, but not without a struggle with Grandpa who does not wish to leave. The family is forced to drug him to bring him along, only for him to later die along the way of a massive stroke. Casey decides to come along with the family while still struggling with his internal conflict. As the trip lengthens, the family meets up with Mr. and Mrs. Wilson one night along the side of the road. The two families befriend each other and continue the trip west together. Both families continue to travel west together until they are separated when Mrs. Wilson becomes seriously ill, which forces the Wilsons to stay behind. The struggle of the Joads is becoming more and more ostensible now as they experience the realities of life. Cruel police officers, cunning salesmen, and ignorant people all add to the total picture and struggle the family is enduring, and bring the reality of the entire situation to a front. Grandma dies, as well as Rose of Sharon’s baby which only adds to the trouble. Connie eventually walks out on Rose, and Noah Joad gives up on the thought of going west, and abandons the family to remain by a river in which the family had stopped. By this time, Ma Joad, who has struggled so hard to keep the family together, has become terribly aware that the family is falling apart. 2 Marian Quest – A Bi-annual Multidisciplinary Research Journal. Vol.. 6 ISSN 2249 - 7145 December 2017 Slowly everything is turned for the worst as Jim Casey is murdered, and Tom, due to avenging Jim’s death is forced into hiding all of while the lack of jobs and appropriate wages still overshadows the family. Once the family reaches California, their hopes and dreams are basically shattered. Although briefly employed for descent pay, wages are slashed, and the hard times become even worse. With lack of money, possessions, and an adequate food supply, the family finally hits rock bottom when torrential rains flood their makeshift boxcar home, destroying their truck, and once again sending them on the run. Although The Grapes of Wrath predominantly follows one family, the Joads, Steinbeck also makes a point to convey just how massive a phenomenon the migration to California was. As circumstances changed in Oklahoma and elsewhere, sending hundreds and thousands of people to find work in other parts of the country, this also caused massive changes in California, where people were hoping to re-start their lives. Chapter 19 includes this description of migration into California: “And the dispossessed, the migrants, flowed into California, two hundred and fifty thousand, and three hundred thousand. Behind them new tractors were going on the land and the tenants were being forced off. And new waves were on the way, new waves of the dispossessed and the homeless, hardened, intent, and dangerous”. (158) Most of The Grapes of Wrath focuses on the human experience of the mass migration: the lives of the migrants themselves. We get to know the Joads in particular, but through their experiences we also get a sense of the hundreds of thousands like them. Chapter 21 includes a passage that describes the impact of mass migration, and its attendant struggles, on the migrants: The movement changed them; the highways, the camps along the road, the fear of hunger and the hunger itself, changed them. The children without dinner changed them, the endless moving changed them. They were migrants. And the hostility changed them, welded them, united them - hostility that made the little towns group and arm as though to repel an invader... (192-193) As in the passage above, Steinbeck describes these situations (hunger, highways, etc.) as forces that have a significant impact on the people and bring about substantial changes in them. We get the sense that all the people involved, both the migrants and the townspeople, are at the mercy of a changing country that they don’t understand. This is often how the migrants are described in the book: as objects that are formed and altered by forces out of their control. 3 Marian Quest – A Bi-annual Multidisciplinary Research Journal. Vol.. 6 ISSN 2249 - 7145 December 2017 Not only the migrants who were affected by the changes but also the people in the community that absorbed. In Chapter 29, we get this description of these communities: “The sheriffs swore in new deputies and ordered new rifles; and the comfortable people in tight houses felt pity at first, and then distaste, and finally hatred for the migrant people.” (299) In this case, we can see that the townspeople’s feelings about the migrants have shifted from the ‘hostility’ in Chapter 21 to ‘hatred’ in Chapter 29. Granted, the circumstances have changed as well - in this part of the book, the rains have come and have left the migrants out of work, starving, and desperate - but all of this has had the knock-on effect of making the migrants a hated community. One can say that Steinbeck wrote this novel to make the plight and difficulties of the migrant workers known to all of America. He accomplished this by telling the story from the viewpoint of a particular family, rather than the migrant workers as a whole.

Load more