Banning The Grapes of Wrath

A man burning Steinbeck's novel.

In recent classes, we have discussed the great controversy that the publication of Steinbeck’s novel, The Grapes of Wrath has caused. From the government hearings to the more modern claims of it being a completely fictitious source about the Great Depression, the book has certainly had an impact on American life and culture. In his native California, the Grapes of Wrath was poorly received and even incurred the wrath of a local library.

Marci Lingo discusses just how strongly the Kern County Free Library felt about Steinbeck’s book. The Library describes the terrible crimes Steinbeck has committed through the publication of the book: “The Grapes of Wrath has offended our citizenry by falsely implying that many of our fine people are a low, ignortant [sic], profane and blasphemous type living in a vicious and filthy manner.” And that was only one of the book’s mild offenses. Public officials are supposedly presented as “inhumane vigilantes, breathing class hatred and divested of sympathy or human decency.”

The library only seems to legitimize any possible claims that Steinbeck might have made in the Grapes of Wrath. Banning a book that tells a fictional story of the terrible times which migrants from the Dust Bowl paints the officials as what Steinbeck supposedly sees them as. Not allowing the story to be read (or seen for that matter because the library also sought to halt production of the movie) certainly can be interpreted as an act of “class hatred” or the action of a person who is “divested of sympathy.”

An interesting note that Lingo makes is that the Associated Farmers were among the first to support the book banning. The suppression of the ideas that Steinbeck puts forth is akin to the suppression of the so-called “reds” (or any sort of workers campaign for better wages) that the Farmers’ Association of the book attempted. The ban, like the unfair wages, was met with opposition. The governing board supporting the ban was painted as a sort of propagandizing entity that creates conditions where “the public is no longer to decide what it shall read. That choice is to be taken from it and be exercised by a public body.”

The ban did not last long and Steinbeck’s novel was allowed back on the library shelves in 1941. It’s amusing to think how those spearheading the campaign back then would feel if they knew that The Grapes of Wrath was a required reading for most students in the United States these days.