The Grapes of Wrath

As the Joads begin their journey, Steinbeck wonders whether a tractor is inherently “bad” (157) because it is an example of automation in agriculture. His ostensible conclusion is that it is not. As he says, “If this tractor were ours it would be good—not mine, but ours. If our tractor turned the long furrows of our land, it would be good” (157). True, tractors were part of the consolidation process. Far more efficient than a plough, one tractor could do the work of twenty families. The tractor thereby provided an economic rationale for the evictions. However, the real problem, Steinbeck suggests, is ownership. If the tractor and the land were owned in common, instead of by an individual or company, it could be something that benefited rather than harmed people. They could use it to ensure a plentiful supply of food. They could employ it to lighten the burden of labor, so that they had more time to educate or enjoy themselves. Steinbeck says it was “the monster,” the bank, and capitalism “that sent the tractor out” (37).

Yet in the very next sentence, Steinbeck says of the tractor driver, “He could not see the land as it was, he could not smell the land as it smelled; his feet did not stamp the clods or feel the warmth and power of the earth” (37-38). This suggests something inherently alienating about mechanized farming, and that being in a tractor by its nature detaches humans from a more intimate connection to the land. It prevents the kind of spiritual understanding that Steinbeck alludes to when he says that “walking on the earth… kneeling in the earth to eat his lunch; that man who is more than his elements knows the land that is more than its analysis” (120). In contrast, the relation of the tractor to the land is necessarily analytic. It is about straight lines and precise measurements. It is backed up by a technological, scientific understanding which reduces the land to a set of objective physical and chemical processes.

Moreover, this ties into a broader critique of mechanization and mass production in life overall. Steinbeck criticizes the “piece of pie branded like an engine part” (38) that the tractor driver eats. He attacks the wife of the businessman, who carries around a thousand different products “to change the color of hair, eyes, lips, nails, brows, lashes, lids” (161). And he condemns the agricultural industry in California which sprays trees with pesticide and poisons the air. These concerns are often overshadowed by more obvious economic and political issues. For example, they pale in importance compared to issues of wages, hunger, and repression. Nevertheless, this undercurrent recurs throughout the novel. It sits uneasily with the narrative sense that the migrant farmers must be dislocated from the land. This is so that they can realize their identity as a group and destiny as a nascent proletariat. Still, Steinbeck is wedded to the notion of an authentic relation to the land. He sets up this ideal of the “natural” against what he sees as the dehumanizing effects of industrial modernity. Less clear is where this fits into the overarching goal of the novel. In short, he asks if the ideal of the farmer’s way of life can be reconciled with his hopes for a better, collective form of society, or if it is merely a piece of romantic nostalgia.