The Grapes of Wrath

When the Joads and Wilsons stop by a river just inside California state for a rest, Ma is temporarily left alone with Granma and Rose of Sharon. She then has the misfortune to be approached by a police officer. He tells her that she and her family must move on. As he says, “You’re in California, an’ we don’t want you goddamn Okies settlin’ down” (223). This experience is then repeated later when a police deputy arrives at the migrant camp where the family is staying. They are again told to move somewhere else and threatened with violence if they remain. The family is right to wonder why the police want to keep migrants like the Joads in a perpetual state of movement and dislocation. Floyd, the man Tom talks to in the camp, suggests several motives. This is not arbitrary cruelty. He explains, “Some says they don’t want us to vote; keep us movin’ so we can’t vote. An’ some says so we can’t get on relief. An’ some says if we set in one place we’d get organized” (255).

There are practical and political reasons for this harassment. Keeping migrants from staying in one place prevents them from getting “relief,” meaning the federal government aid for the poor and unemployed created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal in 1933. Access to it make migrants less desperate to accept the miniscule wages offered by landowners. Harassment also stops them from registering to vote and obstructs efforts to organize politically. These last two points mean that the migrants are not represented in state government and their concerns can be ignored. However, there is also a deeper motive for the police’s actions. This is revealed in Steinbeck’s description of the “Secret gardening in the evenings” (246). This is where migrants take a little unused land, often amongst weeds, and start secretly growing vegetables. The police, when finding these little gardens, kick them in. This is because, as the officer described by Steinbeck explains it, “A crop raised—why, that makes ownership. Land hoed and the carrots eaten—a man might fight for the land he’s taken food from” (247).

On a literal level the police’s destruction of these “crops” is a petty and absolute enforcement of property rights. The migrants do not own it, and therefore they have no right to use even the paltry bit of land under a patch of weeds. On another level though, this drama serves as a metaphor for why the migrants are perpetually oppressed. By preventing them from staying for more than a month or so anywhere and forcing them to accept their accommodation as always temporary, they prevent them from laying roots. They ensure that the migrants never feel like they belong. And this means that they never come to see themselves as residents or citizens, which would imply the right to a voice and to a decent standard of living. Instead, the harassment keeps them permanently locked in the mindset and status of the migrant—that is, they are only passing through for the time when their labor is useful. As a result, California has no moral or social obligations towards them.

In spite of these measures some of the migrants still try to organize. The appalling wages and the closeness of living and working conditions lead to the rise of political groups with demands. As Tom says, alluding to the peach picking, “Well, s’pose them people got together an’ says. ‘Let ‘em rot” (258), referring to what would happen if the migrants organized collective strike action to improve wages. The problem with this, explains Floyd, is that such a movement requires leaders and speakers. This is when the police would assist the landowners again. State police would help blacklist and imprison anyone perceived as a leader. And if a migrant was particularly troublesome or fought back physically, they might even be killed.

This point is demonstrated in the camp. Revealing the close relationship between police and owners, a police deputy rides in the car beside a labor contractor. The officer then tries to arrest Floyd on a fabricated pretense for simply questioning the contractor’s unwillingness to tell them what he would pay. At the same time, the combined response of Tom and Casy in preventing this arrest shows the potential for resistance to police repression through unified action. It also demonstrates, as Steinbeck says, that ultimately “repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed” (249). This is shown symbolically by the fact that the violence against Floyd brings both Tom and Casy to his aid. It also shown by the fact that it inspires the latter to sacrifice himself for the greater good and to become an activist. In short, this incident intimates how the repressive measures of the police are ultimately counterproductive; trying to force people to keep moving only serves to root a community even more firmly in a place.