John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath as American literary masterpiece

John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath -- the Movie and the Novel

There are quite dramatic differences between the ending of the film version of "The Grapes of Wrath" and the final chapter in the book (chapter 30) -- John Steinbeck's brilliant, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. In fact the last chapter of the novel is so totally dissimilar from the John Ford-directed film one wonders why Hollywood would cut out such engrossing drama as Steinbeck has presented through the printed word. But Hollywood loves happy endings, after all. This paper points out some of those differences and contrasts between novel and film.

In the book (Chapter 30)

The rain is hammering down relentlessly, causing the creek to rise dangerously high. In the boxcar Rose of Sharon is getting ready to deliver her baby (a child that turns out to be stillborn). So outside a potential natural calamity is threatening to occur and in the boxcar a new baby is about to be born -- there is hope for this struggling culture of humanity. The men were "beyond weariness" their faces "were set and dead," Steinbeck wrote (p. 441); but Rose of Sharon by now was screaming in pain so "…every little while" Pa peeked into the boxcar to ask, "All right?" But it was not all right.

Meantime the way Steinbeck describes the incessant rain is very realistic. The family is being flooded out of the only dry place they could find, a boxcar. So they retreat to a barn that is located on higher ground. They get soaking wet in the process. In that barn the Joads find a man and a boy; the boy finds a dry blanket and Rose of Sharon removes her wet clothes and wraps the blanket around her body. The man in the barn is terribly ill -- his face is "wasted" and his eyes are "frightened" -- and he is apparently starving to death. So "Rose of Sharon loosened one side of the blanket and bared her breast," Steinbeck writes on page 455. In other words, as the Joad family escapes rising floodwaters and finds shelter and some degree of warmth, the daughter who has given birth to a stillborn baby is now offering life through the nourishment of her milk that was intended for the baby. The baby is dead, but the dying man can possibly be saved with the milk that was originally intended for the baby.

In the Film

Towards the end of the film Tom Joad and "Ma" are saying goodbye after Tom has avoided being captured. There is no rain, no flooding river, no boxcar, and no daughter about to give birth on a dirty mattress. The scene in the book with men trying to keep the flooding river from overflowing its banks and rising to the level of the boxcar is entirely absent from the film. Director John Ford has placed a moralistic, political, and ideologically themed dialogue in place of the rainy desperate scene in Steinbeck's book. Tom launches into a soliloquy that has left-wing political implications. Tom suggests that a guy "doesn't have a soul of his own"; he rails at the fact that his people have been living "like pigs." One wealthy man may have "a million acres" of "good rich land" while a "hundred thousand" of poor refugees from the Dust Bowl are starving, Tom asserts, sounding like a socialist union organizer. The very final scene in the movie is also absent from the novel; Ma, Pa, and son are seen in the cab of their truck driving towards Fresno California looking for twenty days work in the fields. Ma says it looked "for awhile" that "we was beat, good and beat." But the Hollywood happy ending shows they were not beat. "We're the people," Ma states. Hence the Dust Bowl refugees will "go on forward."

Conclusion