I’ve just been informed that I’m to portray Ma Joad in Prescott Center for the Arts’ upcoming production of THE GRAPES OF WRATH. John Steinbeck’s book had a seminal effect on me when I read it in my early teens. It asked of me that I step outside myself and really see a wider world, one that I could only visit through the covers of a book.
At the end of the novel the Joad family has met with disaster after fleeing the Dust Bowl of Oklahoma to go to the promised land of California. Rose of Sharon's baby is still born, the rains come and they move to higher ground and shelter, where Ma Joad and Rose of Sharon discover a man too sick from starvation to eat solid food. And so Rose of Sharon offers him the milk from her breast. That image shocked me as a teen--the baring of a breast, the offering of it not to an infant but to a grown person, a stranger and finally a man. How stripped of our trappings of civilized society must we be to commit such an act! How desperate must our starved body be to overcome the usual dictates of the mind. In time I understood some of the levels of meaning in the image--the sacrifice of convention for survival, the basic human need to replace loss with renewal and the sometimes surprising and ultimately inspiring act to extend our humanity to include the stranger, the Other. So it may well be John Steinbeck provided my earliest inspiration to look beyond the universe of the Self.
It’s interesting to note that reading the play in
preparation for the audition was my inspiration to focus on The Immigrant
Experience for The Artist’s Path 2016 Festival.
I realized that these good people driven out of their homes by Mother
Nature, a failing economy and sometimes ruthless bankers were immigrants. While not moving to another country they were
seeking a new life in a land very different from the plains of Oklahoma. Steinbeck wrote: “I want to put a tag of shame on the greedy
bastards who are responsible for this [the Great Depression and its effects].” Later when finished with the book, he said, “I’ve
done my damndest to rip a reader’s nerves to rags.”
Wickipedia offers the following summation:
Steinbeck scholar John Timmerman sums up the book's
influence: "The Grapes of Wrath may well be the most thoroughly
discussed novel – in criticism, reviews, and college classrooms – of 20th
century American Literature. The Grapes of Wrath is referred to as a Great American Novel.
The book was noted for Steinbeck's passionate
depiction of the plight of the poor, and many of his
contemporaries attacked his social and political views. Bryan Cordyack writes,
"Steinbeck was attacked as a propagandist and a socialist from both
the left and the right of the political spectrum. They denounced the book as a
'pack of lies' and labeled it 'communist propaganda. Some accused
Steinbeck of exaggerating camp conditions to make a political point. Steinbeck
had visited the camps well before publication of the novel and argued their
inhumane nature destroyed the settlers' spirit.
I cannot help but note the parallels between the collapse of
the economy in 1929 and our more recent Recession of 2008. Many folks including this writer have not
recovered from the effects of this most recent financial debacle.
But literary and political criticism aside, the book and the
play give us an opportunity to celebrate the resilience and compassion of humanity. I am grateful to be a part of this American icon.
Tickets at http://pfaa.net/main-stage.html
