Guthrie and Romanticism

The only things I knew about Woody Guthrie before reading that excerpt from his book was that his music was hugely influential on Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan, he wrote “This Land is Your Land,” and that he had THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS written on his guitar, which is pretty damn cool. Those facts on their own was enough for me to think Guthrie was a pretty good dude. That he wrote a book about traveling and living the hard-working life in the 1940s that was turned into a movie thirty years later starring David Carradine – a fun little Grapes of Wrath connection there – came as quite a surprise to me. A pleasant surprise, though. Guthrie has an honest and folksy style to his writing that made the chapter really easy and exciting to read. His words also give insight into his mindset as an artist, as a folk singer and a man of the people. This chapter sees Guthrie making his way west to California, after spending about 200 pages knocking around and living the honest life in his native Midwest. The hardships faced by Guthrie on his trip seem to be characteristic of that iconic pilgrimage, at least compared to the other texts we’ve read. Many questions quickly arose: Where can I find food to eat? Where can I find a place to sleep? How can I make sure I make it out there safely? And where can I go when I get there? Imagining these words coming from the mouth of the folk legend gives them a clear romantic quality, and had me thinking about which passages or lines of dialogue might best be boiled down to a simple tune, a song that might rally the struggling masses of the Depression. I searched out a few Guthrie recordings (besides “This Land is Your Land”) and found one, “Jesus Christ,” to be particularly representative of that romanticism. The song depicts Jesus as a wise and hard-working man, whose followers worked for their keep and were brave to be following him, who was sentenced to death by bankers, preachers and soldiers for eschewing wealth and advocating that the rich give to the poor. It’s not hard to see that concept, Christ as an everyman, just another member of the proletariat, getting some people excited at a time when being a poor member of the working class might have left many with no hope.