The Grapes of Wrath Part 3: "'What ya think everyone else is lookin' for? Di'monds?'"

I've decided to allow myself just one rant this week, so that there's time to focus on the happy things! That actually happened! So here comes the rant to get it out of the way.

Cause, you know, this:

"There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolise. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And the children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificates- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot."

So, ok, I know the whole of chapter 25 was basically Steinbeck pushing back against progress, but how progressive is progress really if it can't stop children from dying? It seems clear that something has gone horribly wrong when SO much food is being produced, and then just left to rot because it can't be turned into money, when people are starving to death. I think this just really got to me because it still happens, and honestly, it really shouldn't. I know that in the EU, there are lakes of milk and wine, and mountains of rice, wheat and sugar, because SO much is produced, and it seems RIDICULOUS to me that it can't go to feed people who need it, and it always has. And yes, I understand economically that it isn't a good thing to just give people free food, but fuck economics, fuck 'progress', fuck profits, what about a little bit of humanity?

Rant over. But it still burns in my SOUL.

Now let's talk about crazy religious fanatics! I mean, seriously, horrifyingly scary woman,

Who just goes around scaring pregnant young girls whose husbands have JUST RUN OFF AND LEFT THEM (stupid Connie), telling them that they're sinners and that their babies are going to fall out of them?! Assholes, that's who. Or, also, Clack probably would have done it if they'd spoken of pregnancies and things in Victorian times, which obviously they didn't. I did enjoy her return and Ma's threatening to beat her with a stick (GO MA!) and the way Ma basically told Rose of Sharon that she wasn't important enough for God to be bothered about, which was a pretty refreshing thing to hear from a mother about their kid. I also enjoyed how, in the following chapter, Steinbeck basically made it clear that such fundamentalism provides pleasure for a certain kind of person, which, you know, these poor people deserve in their lives. But maybe not at the expense of other poor people WHO ARE PREGNANT AND VULNERABLE.

Also, this preacher sounds like a douche: "He says 'The poor is trying to be rich.'"

By having nice dances and shit? How fucking dare they?!

Anyway... Did we all notice the nice shift in tone in this section? I mean, sure the preacher (the nice one, our preacher) got carted off to jail, and they had to escape that Hooverville before it got burned to the ground, and those people threatened to kill them if they didn't leave their town, but... The government camp! How freaking wonderful is that place? I surely was amused that the children had never seen a toilet before, and that Ma and Rose of Sharon had a whole excited conversation about the showers, and basically, I wouldn't mind living in one of those camps!

Too bad Connie didn't stick around to see the nice camp, and lasted all of about 2 hours in the Hooverville before running out on his PREGNANT WIFE. For personal reasons, though, I don't exactly mind any of this, because it made for some amusing opinions about Connie being allowed to come out in the open:
PA: "'Well, he ain't no good... all the time a-sayin' what he's a-gonna do. Never doin' nothin'."
TOM: "'She might's well give him up. He's prob'ly studyin' to be President of the United States by now.'"

Fortunately, Rose of Sharon still has Ma (GLORIOUS MA) around, to dole out sage advice, aka things that she should probably already know. You know, like:
"'They's times when how you feel got to be kep' to yourself.'" (Translation: You're not the only one with troubles, girl, buck up!)
"'In a little while it ain't gonna be so bad. In a little while. An' that's true.'" (Translation: Time heals all wounds. This too shall pass.)

At this point, if I didn't actually know what was going to happen, I would be SO optimistic. I mean, sure there's this threat of escalating violence, and sure there've been allusions to children starving (Ruthie and Winfield better watch out!) but ALSO there's been another WILKIE sighting, "'This here's my boy Wilkie'" at which I squealed a tiny bit, and which I choose to take as a good sign, blindly ignoring all I know. For all I know, they changed the ending since the last time I read it. IT COULD HAPPEN!