A Political Companion to John Steinbeck by Cyrus Ernesto Zirakzadeh & Simon Stow

Author:Cyrus Ernesto Zirakzadeh & Simon Stow [Zirakzadeh, Cyrus Ernesto & Stow, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General, Literary Criticism, American
ISBN: 9780813142029
Google: Jui5NAEACAAJ
Goodreads: 16286345
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2013-05-29T12:15:29+00:00

“If We Was All Mad the Same Way”: Confluence and Prophecy

In its move to prophesy, to speak the truth about injustice and envision change, The Grapes of Wrath follows Exodus. Both works narrate through the use of distinct and often prophetic voices. Scholarship on Exodus tends to focus on the disparity between its various sections: differences in vocabulary, style, and interest of the Pentateuchal Yahwistic, Elohistic, and Priestly sources. And while the book, woven together by multiple editors from the oral tradition, has literary and thematic unity, several chapters and groups of verses are often regarded as intrusive, disruptive, thematically or chronologically. Among these are the Book of the Covenant, the Priestly sections detailing the media of Israel’s worship, and all of chapter 18, in which Jethro reunites Moses with his wife and family and instructs his son-in-law on how to govern efficiently through small groups and via tacit leadership. These disruptions parallel Steinbeck’s intercalary chapters. Composed over seven centuries, the literary structure of Exodus is composite in all its meanings as the joining of traditions, the weaving of sources, and the exposition of themes. The prophetic narrators of Exodus blur the distinguishing features of history with inflated numbers, shifting chronology, and divine interventions. Steinbeck structures his specific and intercalary narratives in the same way. In Exodus there are narratives about Moses alongside narratives of Israel’s oppression and narratives of the intransigence of the ruler alongside narratives of the rescue and provision by Yahweh. There are instructions appropriate to an urban life alongside instructions for an agricultural one. In The Grapes of Wrath there are symbol-laden narratives of the sun and the turtle alongside the specifics of Tom Joad’s life and narratives about the crimes of the wealthy alongside narratives about the feeding of symbolic and specific children.

In a discussion about fictionalizing the historical, Steinbeck wrote his agent, Elizabeth Otis, “I’m trying to write history while it is happening and I don’t want to be wrong.” He wanted his history to have far wider implications than the historical reality of the Okies he knew and championed.25 While prophecy is meant to be specific, it is often also meant to hold an enduring relevance, as it speaks with symbol against cultural trends or constrictions. Like the Old Testament prophet, Steinbeck’s intercalary narrator imbues his message with a sense of timelessness through an utter lack of detail and through universal symbols, such as the turtle. From the first chapter to the penultimate, he shoulders a Mosaic authority as he simultaneously looks backward and forward in descriptions of the migration, the growing nation, and the codification of the law. Further, Steinbeck’s intercalary narrative is as composite in structure as the narrative of Exodus. While the intercalations are by one omniscient narrator, that voice pauses in several places over an embedded and authoritative prophet, the nameless guitar man of the camps who welds the people “to one thing, one unit” in chapter 17.26 As in Exodus, the narrative voice of the intercalary chapters stands

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