When I first read The Grapes of Wrath in high school, it was a short, snappy, action story about the plight of the homeless Joad family during the Great Depression. The version of The Grapes of Wrath I read in high school was a highly redacted or Reader's Digest version of the novel, not just shortened but also expurgated, i.e., passages thought to be too explicit for young people were excluded.
Now, as I read the entire work some sixty years later for the first time, I want to exclaim, "My, how you've grown!" That is to say, "My, how what is arguably John Steinbeck's greatest novel has grown in length, detail, complexity of story, subtlety of character development and richness of overall artistic expression."
The unexpurgated version has a curious yet fascinating chapter-structure that makes it ripe for widespread editing and excising:
The even-numbered chapters (yes, by that I mean chapters 2, 4, 6, etc.) tell the Joad-family story, the shortened, clean, action-oriented version of the story I read when I was in high school. It's also the Academy Award-winning story you might have seen on the silver screen starring the great Henry Fonda and brilliantly directed by John Ford. The story told in the film, i.e., the even-numbered chapters, is the story with which you're probably already familiar: Tom Joad who has just been released early on parole from prison (having been imprisoned for murder) returns home to his family just as his parents, siblings, aunt and uncle and their children are about to leave the Oklahoma Panhandle for California. The Joad-family farm and the uncle's farm have been repossessed by the bank after their crops failed due to drought and poor agricultural practices that worsened the effects of the drought. Tom's father and uncle have read "circulars" stating there were plenty of jobs for migrant "pickers" of fruits and vegetables in the fertile California valleys. The Joad family decides to leave for California in the uncle's Model T truck.
The odd-numbered chapters (chapters 1, 3, 5, 7, etc.) provide a motherload of rich added-value material. They're sidelights, many of which have the qualities one might find in a classic New York Times "Reporter's Notebook" article. In fact, John Steinbeck was commissioned to write a seven-part series for The San Francisco News that was published under the title, "The Harvest Gypsies." It wouldn't be surprising to me if in covering the real-life tragedy unfolding in the San Fernando Valley, Steinbeck may have uncovered and developed a great many of the thoughts and observations that he subsequently worked into these odd-numbered chapters.
Some sixty years after I read the work for the first time, I'm reading the odd-numbered intermediary chapters combined with the even-numbered Joad-family chapters, and I am appreciating the rich, artistic experience Steinbeck had in mind when he first wrote The Grapes of Wrath in the mid-1930s. Reading it in the way Steinbeck originally intended the work does require more patience and care than reading the Reader's Digest "student version."
One example: Steinbeck devotes an entire intermediary chapter, Chapter Three, to describing what happens in a torn-up patch of grass by the side of a concrete highway. He describes, "the grass heads heavy with oat beards to catch on a dog's coat, and foxtails to tangle in a horse's fetlocks, and clover burrs to fasten in sheep's wool…"
I have always admired Steinbeck's eye for detail and his willingness to go "microscopic." He often allows his focus to include insects and small animals that inhabit this tiny patch of landscape: "The sun lay on the grass and warmed it, and in the shade under the grass the insects moved, ants and ant lions to set traps for them, grasshoppers to jump into the air and flick their yellow wings for a second, sow bugs like armadillos, plodding restlessly on many tender feet."
Into this patch of grass, this micro-environment by the side of a concrete road, lumbers a single turtle: "And over the grass at the roadside a land turtle crawled, turning aside for nothing, dragging his high-domed shell over the grass, not really walking, but boosting and dragging his shell along."
For paragraphs we follow the painfully slow progress of this turtle as it moves over rough terrain: "The back legs went to work, straining like elephant legs…"
Presently, the turtle overcomes hurdles and crawls onto the highway where it is nearly hit by "a forty-year-old woman" driving a "sedan." We readers hold our collective breath. The car swerves to avoid the turtle. "The turtle had jerked into its shell, but now it hurried on, for the highway was burning hot." And now a light truck almost flattens the turtle but only manages to flip the turtle on its back: "Lying on its back, the turtle was tight in its shell for a long time. But at last its legs waved in the air, reaching for something to pull itself over which it finally manages to do. Chapter 3 ends telling us the turtle's "old humorous eyes looked ahead, and the horny beak opened a little. His yellow toe nails slipped a fraction in the dust."
Why does Steinbeck focus on the affairs of insects by the side of the highway and then proceed to narrate the adventures of a lowly land turtle for an entire chapter in his novel (even if Chapter Three takes up only a tiny bit more than two pages)? Perhaps because his democratic values insist that non-humnan stories can have value and should be honored by being told? I'd say, "yes" to that. But there are story-structure reasons that also justify it: In Chapter 4, a truck that in Chapter 2 gave an unnamed distinctfully-yet-strangely dressed man a ride, and which is the same truck in Chapter 3 that nearly ran over the turtle, drops the same man off by the side of the road. For the first time our narrator gives the man a name, but only a last name, "Joad."
Joad removes his bright yellow shoes, places them under his arm and starts walking through the dust in his bare feet. A page later he picks up the turtle. Some pages after that we learn he intends to bring it home as a gift. After another page of description, Joad meets "Reverend" Jim Casey, and in a way, that's when our story begins in the traditional sense with dialogue and description.
Does this novel have a slow start? It does. It starts as slowly as a turtle. (By the way I don't recall in high school The Grapes of Wrath I read having a slow start; perhaps it got off to a faster start thanks to further editing.
In the "grown-up" version of the novel, we get the distinct impression the author doesn't mind the slow start; he's intent on not allowing even the most minute details escape his and the reader's purview.
Next month, more about how the structure of the unexpurgated version of The Grapes of Wrath even when addressing emotionally explosive topics like sexual assault in the workplace, adds depth and artistic richness to the entire novel.
