Finding Fact in Fiction

By Michael Ronan

[1] What is popular is not always right, and this may very well be the case with John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. In the preface to his The Truth About John Steinbeck and the Migrants (1939), George Thomas Miron boldly writes of Steinbeck, “He is a fellow of unquestionable talent, but nevertheless it seems to me that he is showing a cheap streak. In a little while the pink brethren will drop him, and he will be heard from no more” (1). His criticism of the novel is spot-on even though Miron has been proven wrong in his first statement and The Grapes of Wrath still resonates with readers today. Miron proves that although The Grapes of Wrath is an enormously popular novel, it may not have captured any truth of the 1930s-era mass exodus from the dust bowls of Oklahoma.

[2] Originally written as a series of correspondences with a colleague, Miron proclaims that the friend he writes to “has been the soundest critic of American Letters for the past thirty-five years” and is “consistently fair, and in many particular instances, in his attitude toward all classifications of people in the United States” (1). This balance is especially important to note because one of Miron’s greatest issues with Steinbeck is that he is incredibly biased in favor of lower class migrants.

[3] “By all indications it is not given to American writers of the Left to be both novelist and, at the same time, expert in social, political and economic fields” (3), says Miron in the first line of the first, loosely organized, chapter of his publication. Here, Steinbeck is faulted with three things: prejudices, exaggerations, and over-simplifications. These three things, Miron believes, are plentiful in The Grapes of Wrath. Specifically, Miron observes Steinbeck’s obvious favoritism toward the poor. He calls them the “have-nots.” Miron describes Steinbeck’s “naïve belief that a man who has nothing is always better than one who has something, that a man who has nothing is a victim of our competitive economic system and therefore the man who has something is of course his oppressor” (4).

[4] This reminds me of the scene in which Muley is notified that he is being evicted from his land. A rich man in a car brings Muley an eviction notice, and they have a brief conversation. Muley angrily demands his question “who do we shoot?” be answered. This scene perfectly demonstrates Steinbeck’s bias. Muley’s emotions are the sole focus of the entire scene. Who is to say the man in the car would have been as unsympathetic as he is portrayed? It is certainly not his fault Muley is losing his land. Fault lies within the system. Steinbeck’s portrayal of one well-off man as an oppressor shows his prejudice. This over-simplification of the situation, placing the blame on a man who is just doing his job, demonstrates Steinbeck’s “lack of understanding of capitalistic, and particularly agricultural, economy” (4). Miron is very effective in situations such as these; he broadens the scope of Steinbecks many times narrowly focused scenes. In replacing facts that Steinbeck may have strategically left out, Miron is able to show the flaws in Steinbeck’s logic. He clearly shows that Steinbeck is crafting a story to support his beliefs.

[5] One obvious ideal on Steinbeck’s agenda in The Grapes of Wrath is that of collectivism. Steinbeck uses the plot and action of his novel to promote this form of society. Miron says, “Of course from first to last the tragedy which continually entered the lives of the Joad family was never directly due to any fault of their own or the circumstances of drouth and mass-migration” (7). Steinbeck puts all the blame for the economic depression of the 1930s on the upper class, as he does in Muley’s famous “who do we shoot?” scene. Though it is absurd to believe that wealthy oppressors caused all the Joads’ suffering, Steinbeck creates this impression to construct an environment that will be supportive of his collectivist ideas. Miron points out that the “Joads only found peace and protection while living in a government camp” (9). Once the reader can realize what Steinbeck is trying to accomplish, which is to promote a near-socialist government regime, it is easy to see how his story is twisted to support his politics. It is almost certain that had Steinbeck had different beliefs, a government-run camp would have been far from the only place the Joads found solace. This is one of Miron’s utmost complaints of the novel; it creates far too much false pretence.

[6] Not only does Steinbeck exaggerate particular circumstances, such as the causes of the Joads’ suffering, he also exaggerates by means of generalization. Miron describes Steinbeck’s “alternating chapters, one which pictures the great mass-migration from the Dust Bowl, followed by a chapter which presents exclusively the sorrow and suffering of the Joad clan” as a “skillful and subtle method of making it appear that all migrant families were enduring the same hardships and oppressions as did the Joads” (9). Steinbeck is careful in crafting his illusions so that they are entirely believable, while they are not entirely untrue.

[7] Another very effective element in Miron’s arsenal of criticisms is his keen ability to catch Steinbeck contradicting himself. In The Grapes of Wrath California growers are accused of “importing twice as much foreign labor as was needed in order to force wages down for crop-pickers” (10). Miron says that it “seemed a strange condition of affairs when at the same time meetings were held in the farm sections to devise some means to stem the invasion of California by out-of-state indigents” (10). Here Steinbeck is caught in a contradiction. Growers in California could not possibly have been importing labor and trying to keep laborers out of their state at the same time. These actions would be counterproductive. Miron thus proves Steinbeck attempts to take two of the problems of the1930s mass-migration and pin the blame for both of them on the well-off landowners. This shows Steinbeck’s continued bias toward the “have-nots” and his manipulation of fact to support his fiction. As Miron puts it, it “gave the writer an opportunity of both showing the cupidity of the growers for attracting the unfortunate migrants to California, and that the oppressive and illegal patrols deprived the migrants of their constitutional right to cross a state line” (12). It is suggested that there was a time when handbills were distributed because of a shortage of laborers in one section of California. Steinbeck misrepresents this fact to create hatred between classes and animosity among the readers for the land-owning growers.

[8] Miron also explains the reasons that growers would fear unionization within the agricultural sector by catching Steinbeck in a contradiction. Miron quotes Steinbeck as saying that if picking “be delayed even one week, the crop will rot and be lost” (13). Steinbeck later writes that “It is reasonable to believe that agriculture would suffer no more from organization than industry has” (13). Unionization is what Steinbeck is referring to by organization. Miron explains why this does not make sense. There is a “decided difference between calling a strike that would last one week in a industrial plant, which would mean a loss in most cases of the profits during just that period, and a strike of one critical week during harvest in a California orchard, which would result in a loss to the grower of his entire profit for the whole year” (13). With this argument, readers can see the growers’ side of the story that is never discussed in the novel. The growers seem far less oppressive when one understands their legitimate fears. “Is it any wonder growers,” says Miron rhetorically, “fear strong unionization and radicalism among agricultural workers (14)?”

[9] Miron replaces many of the fictions of The Grapes of Wrath with fact. His arguments are effective and wholly convincing because he directly points to places where Steinbeck is either mistaken in his history of the 1930s migration from the dust bowls or has intentionally been misleading with his novel. I found that Miron’s language was sometimes so strong that it detracted from his argument, making him seem plainly arrogant. For instance, at one point, Miron says, “I shall not refute the point; it is altogether too asinine, and hence beneath my dignity to do so” (8). However, this is only in a few instances. Overall, Miron supports his statement that The Grapes of Wrath is “A novel wherein naturalism has gone berserk, where untruth has run amuck drunken upon prejudice and exaggeration, where matters economic have been hurled beyond the pale of all rational and realistic thinking” (7). The Truth About John Steinbeck and the Migrants is essential to understanding at what points The Grapes of Wrath hides lapses in truth and what the real story is as opposed to what one may read in the novel, or what one may view on the reel.