"GRAPES OF WRATH" AND THE AMERICAN DREAM

by Henry Kielarowski

I watched "Grapes of Wrath" again this evening.  Familiar themes in the American experience:  be it displaced farmers from Oklahoma or baristas and Twitter people with degrees, there is a continual struggle between workers and those with wealth desiring cheap, easily manipulated, labor.  

The wealthy pretty much got their way until the Depression (rich people gambling to get richer) and the re balancing of the worker/owner relationship -- more in favor of the worker-- under FDR, and his New Deal.  This balance, which was great for the overall health of the country, continued through LBJ and the Great Society.  Now things are going the other way, with the wealthy controller class producing a political and economic system that assures their success no matter which of the two political parties wins.  Both Reagan and Clinton dismantled the Great Society and deregulated banking and other entities once deemed "public trusts."

Tom Joad's famous final speech (excerpts below) to his Ma powerfully expressed the thoughts and yearnings of the Depression-period worker.  The American revolutionary, Tom Joad, espousing collective action that create change, is a familiar subplot in the American drama.  What distresses me about this speech is Tom's dream to spread wealth more justly "...if all our folks got together and yelled..." change might come.  In this century people yell for a few months and the illusion and control by the owners returns.  In the age of Ayn Rand the notion of a collective soul is anathema.  

Tom Joad: I been thinking about us, too, about our people living like pigs and good rich land layin' fallow. Or maybe one guy with a million acres and a hundred thousand farmers starvin'. And I been wonderin' if all our folks got together and yelled...

Ma Joad: Tommy, you're not aimin' to kill nobody.

Tom Joad: No, Ma, not that. That ain't it. It's just, well as long as I'm an outlaw anyways... maybe I can do somethin'... maybe I can just find out somethin', just scrounge around and maybe find out what it is that's wrong and see if they ain't somethin' that can be done about it. I ain't thought it out all clear, Ma. I can't. I don't know enough.

Ma Joad: How am I gonna know about ya, Tommy? Why they could kill ya and I'd never know. They could hurt ya. How am I gonna know?

Tom Joad: Well, maybe it's like Casy says. A fellow ain't got a soul of his own, just little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody, then...

Ma Joad: Then what, Tom?

Tom Joad: Then it don't matter. I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build - I'll be there, too.