33 pages • 1 hour read
John SteinbeckThe Harvest Gypsies: On the Road to the Grapes of Wrath
Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1936A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Article 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Article 2 Summary
In this article, Steinbeck shed light on the poor conditions in the informal squatters’ camps where the migrants lived—typically on a riverbank or another source of water. Steinbeck wrote, “From a distance it looks like a city dump, and well it may, for the city dumps are the sources for the material of which it is built” (26). One standard house in the camp was 10 feet by 10 feet and made of corrugated paper. Wooden frames supported the walls. There was a dirt floor. The family—specifically, the wife—washed clothes in the river. The family consisted of a husband and wife and three children. The family carried some old belongings from their previous home, but they did not have enough money to buy new clothes or soap—only food. After a few months of living like this, the children’s clothes would fray and the house would turn into wet mush due to rain. Malnutrition made families prone to pneumonia during the flu season. The husband may have made up to $400 a year, but any setback—like missing a harvest—could cause their savings to dip, and they may have earned as little as $150 to support their family. Steinbeck also talked about the mentality of the farm workers, who maintained pride in their situation but constantly feared starvation.
Steinbeck described another typical settlement. A husband and wife—along with their four children—lived in a tattered tent. There was one bed for the entire family. An empty box of apples served as the dinner table. Flies buzzed around the tent. The family defecated on a willow patch near the tent. One of the family’s children had died a few weeks ago. The cause of death: a lack of available fruit, milk, and other nutrients crucial to a child’s development. The child’s death brought down the spirits of the family, reducing the father’s ability to be as productive in the fields, thus diminishing the family’s already meager wagers. After a time, the children no longer cared to go to school, because their better-dressed peers teased them for their poor clothing and dirty appearance. The family had not always been this way; they may have had a nice grocery store back in the Midwest, but when the great drought known as the Dust Bowl swept across that part of the country, their store closed down.
There were settlements that were worse-off—what Steinbeck called the “lower class” of the squatter camps. In one such settlement, a family had built a house out of the branches of willow trees, which were then draped in weeds, tin, and bits of old carpet. There was no bed. The three-year-old child carried a belly that was swollen from malnutrition. Flies buzzed around the toddler. He died soon after. The mother gave birth to a stillborn baby; the mother would not have been able to feed the baby, as her diet did not allow her to produce breast milk. The husband in this family was once a sharecropper—a tenant farmer—but couldn’t make a living. The father had lost the desire to talk or discipline his children, who could contract a disease by running barefoot along the unclean riverbank. The children defecated in the open wherever they liked. A sheriff would occasionally raid the camps, or a doctor would check in if a disease like scarlet fever presented, but otherwise, hardly anyone outside cared about the living conditions in the camp.
Article 2 Analysis
Steinbeck’s second article illustrated the tragic fall in circumstances for the typical family—a reversal of the “rags to riches” story that we often hear, which suggests that hard work will allow people to rise to a higher social status and level of financial prosperity. It was deeply ironic that the family had to save all their money to purchase food, even though they harvested the crops that fed the rest of the state.
In describing the bleak conditions in which the migrants resided, Steinbeck made clear their desire for a permanent home.
Steinbeck also subtly noted the gender roles and divides within the camps, and the additional burden that women bore in caring for the home and children and children while men went to work in the fields. One of the most iconic photos of the Great Depression—not pictured in this book—was the black-and-white Migrant Mother by Resettlement Administration photographer Dorothea Lange. In that photo, a mother’s face is grim and lined with wrinkles. Similarly, Steinbeck focused on the migrants’ faces to emphasize the scale of their suffering: “Here in the faces of the husband and wife, you begin to see an expression you will notice on every face; not worry, but absolute terror of the starvation that crowds in against the borders of the camp” (27).
Steinbeck also noted how families maintained their dignity in the face of such hardship: “The spirit of this family is not quite broken, for the children, three of them, still have clothes, and the family possesses three old quilts and a soggy, lumpy mattress” (27). The workers carefully swept their dirt floor, indicating that they had enough pride to keep their temporary home from falling into squalor. They tried to enroll their children in school, even if they would only be there for a month before they moved yet again.
Steinbeck included these small details as a way of showing that these families were once accustomed to living in better circumstances, and that they hoped to reclaim a solid, middle-class lifestyle. Steinbeck extended empathy in his writing to these families, who received so little understanding from the many Californians who despised them. He urged the reader not to condemn the migrant farmworker if he stole because “the reason is not to be sought in their origin nor in any tendency to weakness in their character” (31). Instead, Steinbeck suggested that readers consider the desperate circumstances of these men and try to understand the challenges facing their fellow human beings.
The family’s ability to maintain pride in themselves was admirable, Steinbeck implied. When food was scarce and they could afford few material comforts, pride was all that a family had left. However, even that pride faded when the sheer task of feeding one’s family became too much; Steinbeck noted that farm workers eventually gave up on trying to maintain a toilet or sending the children to school. When a child died of malnutrition, the family hardened itself, for there was no room for sorrow: “The father and mother now feel that paralyzed dullness with which the mind protects itself against too much sorrow and too much pain” (28).
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By John Steinbeck
