The Grapes of Wrath

Unlike John Steinbeck’s novel, the film adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath depicts a world in which survival is a triumph in and of itself. While the Joad Family loses all but the clothes on their collective back, they endure the process by which they lose a fortune. In this regard, the transformative film speaks to the American struggle for self-determination on a Western frontier seemingly bereft of hope and prosperity.

The film’s opening and ending mirror the journey taken by the Joad family; one that brings them closer to liberation than they have ever before been. Tom sets out as a hitchhiker, having been recently released from prison, while he and the rest of the Joads find themselves in a more accommodating camp of a more civilized kind by the film’s end. This film evolves thusly without contributing to a socio-political culture that might have been perceived as pervasively communist at the time. In avoiding political implications that might have served to undermine the film’s thematic tropes, the film achieves a fundamentally more enduring legacy.

The Grapes of Wrath captures an age in which the American individual is able to ensure his own self-interest against all capitalism and exploitation. In an age in which farms were subject to seizure by financial institutions, the film paints a picture of a cruel world order that deprives those least fortunate of the means by which they might become more fortunate. However, there remains a hopeful tone to the film’s conclusion, as despite finding themselves in a migrant workers camp, the camp is somewhat more civilized than others, just as is our world today relative to its past. As such, director John Ford employs a hopeless landscape as a platform for a hopeful future.

Work Cited

The Grapes of Wrath. Dir. John Ford. Perf. Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, John Carradine. 20th Century Fox, 1940. Film.