Chapter 25 the Grapes of Wrath

THE SPRING IS BEAUTIFUL in California. Valleys in which the ingathering blossoms ar fragrant pink and white waters in a school sea. Then the first tendrils of the grapes swelling from the old gnarled vines, cascade down to cover the trunks. The full unripe hills are round and soft as breasts. And on the level vegetable lands are the mile-long rows of pale green lettuce and the spindly weeny cauliflowers, the gray-green unearthly artichoke plants. And then the leaves break out on the trees, and the petals regurgitate from the fruit trees and carpet the earth with pink and white.The centers of the blossoms swell and grow and color cherries and apples, peaches and pears, figs which close the flower in the fruit. All California quickens with produce, and the fruit grows strong, and the limbs bend in stages below the fruit so that little crutches must be placed under them to support the weight. Behind the fruitfulness are workforce of understanding and knowledge, and skill, cust ody who experiwork forcetation with seed, endlessly developing the techniques for gr eater crops of plants whose grow depart resist the million enemies of the earth the molds, the insects, the rusts, the blights.These men work carefully and endlessly to perfect the seed, theroots. And in that respect are the men of chemistry who spray the trees against pests, who second the grapes, who cut out disease and rots, mildews and sicknesses. Doctors of preventive medicine, men at the borders who look for fruit flies, for Japanese beetle, men who insulate the sick trees and root them out and burn them, men of knowledge.The men who graft the young trees, the little vines, are the cleverest of all, for theirs is a surgeons job, as tender and tender and these men must impart surgeons hands and surgeons hearts to slit the bark, to place the grafts, to bind the wounds and cover them from the air. These are capital men. Along the rows, the cultivators move, tearing the spring potful an d turn it under to make a fertile earth, breaking the ground to hold the water up near the surface, ridging the ground in little pools for the irrigation, destroying the boob roots that may drink the water away from the trees.And all the time the fruit swells and the flowers break out in long clusters on the vines. And in the increase year the warmth grows and the leaves turn dark green. The prunes lengthen like little green birds eggs, and the limbs sag down against the crutches under the weight. And the hard little pears take shape, and the ancestry of the blur devolves out on the peaches. Grape blossoms shed their tiny petals and the hard little beads become green buttons, and the buttons grow heavy. The men who work in the fields, the owners of the little orchards, watch and calculate.The year is heavy with produce. And the men are proud, for of their knowledge they potentiometer make the year heavy. They use up transformed the world with their knowledge. The short, lea n pale yellow has been make big and productive. Little sour apples do grown large and lovely, and that old grape that grew among the trees and fed the birds its tiny fruit has mothe cherry-red a thousand varieties, red and black, green and pale pink, purple and yellow and each variety with its own flavor. The men who work in the experimental farms take up made new fruits nectarines and cardinal kinds of plums, walnuts with composing shells.And always they work, selecting, grafting, changing, driving themselves, driving the earth to produce. And first the cherries ripen. Cent and a half(prenominal) a pound. Hell, we cant pick em for that. Black cherries and red cherries, full and sweet, and the birds eat half of each cherry and the yellowjackets buzz into the holes the birds made. And on the ground the seeds drop and dry with black shreds hanging from them. The purple prunes soften and sweeten. My God, we cant pick them and dry and sulphur them. We cant afford wages, no matte r what wages. And the purple prunes carpet the ground.And first the skins wrinkle a little and swarms of flies come to feast, and the valley is filled with the odor of sweet decay. The sum of money turns dark and the crop shrivels on the ground. And the pears grow yellow and soft. Five dollars a ton. Five dollars for forty fiftypound boxes trees pruned and sprayed, orchards cultivatedpick the fruit, put it in boxes, committal the trucks, possess the fruit to the canneryforty boxes for five dollars. We cant do it. And the yellow fruit falls heavily to the ground and splashes on the ground. The yellowjackets dig into the soft meat, and thither is a aroma of ferment and rot.Then the grapeswe cant make good wine. People cant buy good wine. Rip the grapes from the vines, good grapes, rotten grapes, wasp-stung grapes. Press stems, press dirt and rot. But at that places mildew and formic acid in the vats. Add sulphur and tannic acid. The smell from the ferment is not the rich odor of wine, but the smell of decay and chemicals. Oh, well. It has alcohol in it, anyway. They can get drunk. The little farmers watched debt creep up on them like the tide. They sprayed the trees and sold no crop, they pruned and grafted and could not pick the crop.And the men of knowledge have worked, have considered, and the fruit is rotting on the ground, and the decaying mash in the wine vat is poisoning the air. And taste the wineno grape flavor at all, save sulphur and tannic acid and alcohol. This little orchard will be a part of a great holding next year, for the debt will have choked the owner. This vineyard will belong to the bank. Only the great owners can survive, for they own the canneries, too. And four pears peeled and cut in half, cooked and canned, still appeal xv cents. And the canned pears do not spoil.They will last for years. The decay spreads over the State, and the sweet smell is a great sorrow on the land. hands who can graft the trees and make the seed ferti le and big can find no way to let the hungry raft eat their produce. manpower who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby their fruits may be eaten. And the visitation hangs over the State like a great sorrow. The industrial plant of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground.The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at xx cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are ferocious at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruitand kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. erupt deep brown for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards a long the banks to keep the hungry people from angle them out.Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth. There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that nodding cannot symbolize. 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 children dying of pellagra must transcend because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificatedied of malnutritionbecause the food must rot, must be forced to rot.The people come with nets to seek for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, comprehend to the screech pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze and in the eyes of the p eople there is the failure and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.Chapter 25 the Grapes of WrathTHE SPRING IS BEAUTIFUL in California. Valleys in which the fruit blossoms are fragrant pink and white waters in a shallow sea. Then the first tendrils of the grapes swelling from the old gnarled vines, cascade down to cover the trunks. The full green hills are round and soft as breasts. And on the level vegetable lands are the mile-long rows of pale green lettuce and the spindly little cauliflowers, the gray-green unearthly artichoke plants. And then the leaves break out on the trees, and the petals drop from the fruit trees and carpet the earth with pink and white.The centers of the blossoms swell and grow and color cherries and apples, peaches and pears, figs which close the flower in the fruit. All California quickens with produce, and the fruit grows heavy, and the limbs bend gradually under the fruit so that little crutches must be placed under them to support the weight. Behind the fruitfulness are men of understanding and knowledge, and skill, men who experiment with seed, endlessly developing the techniques for greater crops of plants whose roots will resist the million enemies of the earth the molds, the insects, the rusts, the blights.These men work carefully and endlessly to perfect the seed, theroots. And there are the men of chemistry who spray the trees against pests, who sulphur the grapes, who cut out disease and rots, mildews and sicknesses. Doctors of preventive medicine, men at the borders who look for fruit flies, for Japanese beetle, men who quarantine the sick trees and root them out and burn them, men of knowledge.The men who graft the young trees, the little vines, are the cleverest of all, for theirs is a surgeons job, as tender and delicate and these men must have surgeons hands and surgeons hearts to slit the bark, to place the grafts, to bind the wounds and cover them from the air. These are great men. Along the rows, the cultivators move, tearing the spring grass and turning it under to make a fertile earth, breaking the ground to hold the water up near the surface, ridging the ground in little pools for the irrigation, destroying the weed roots that may drink the water away from the trees.And all the time the fruit swells and the flowers break out in long clusters on the vines. And in the growing year the warmth grows and the leaves turn dark green. The prunes lengthen like little green birds eggs, and the limbs sag down against the crutches under the weight. And the hard little pears take shape, and the beginning of the fuzz comes out on the peaches. Grape blossoms shed their tiny petals and the hard little beads become green buttons, and the buttons grow heavy. The men who work in the fields, the owners of the little orchards, watch and calculate.The year is heavy with produce. And the me n are proud, for of their knowledge they can make the year heavy. They have transformed the world with their knowledge. The short, lean wheat has been made big and productive. Little sour apples have grown large and sweet, and that old grape that grew among the trees and fed the birds its tiny fruit has mothered a thousand varieties, red and black, green and pale pink, purple and yellow and each variety with its own flavor. The men who work in the experimental farms have made new fruits nectarines and forty kinds of plums, walnuts with paper shells.And always they work, selecting, grafting, changing, driving themselves, driving the earth to produce. And first the cherries ripen. Cent and a half a pound. Hell, we cant pick em for that. Black cherries and red cherries, full and sweet, and the birds eat half of each cherry and the yellowjackets buzz into the holes the birds made. And on the ground the seeds drop and dry with black shreds hanging from them. The purple prunes soften and sweeten. My God, we cant pick them and dry and sulphur them. We cant pay wages, no matter what wages. And the purple prunes carpet the ground.And first the skins wrinkle a little and swarms of flies come to feast, and the valley is filled with the odor of sweet decay. The meat turns dark and the crop shrivels on the ground. And the pears grow yellow and soft. Five dollars a ton. Five dollars for forty fiftypound boxes trees pruned and sprayed, orchards cultivatedpick the fruit, put it in boxes, load the trucks, deliver the fruit to the canneryforty boxes for five dollars. We cant do it. And the yellow fruit falls heavily to the ground and splashes on the ground. The yellowjackets dig into the soft meat, and there is a smell of ferment and rot.Then the grapeswe cant make good wine. People cant buy good wine. Rip the grapes from the vines, good grapes, rotten grapes, wasp-stung grapes. Press stems, press dirt and rot. But theres mildew and formic acid in the vats. Add sulphur and tann ic acid. The smell from the ferment is not the rich odor of wine, but the smell of decay and chemicals. Oh, well. It has alcohol in it, anyway. They can get drunk. The little farmers watched debt creep up on them like the tide. They sprayed the trees and sold no crop, they pruned and grafted and could not pick the crop.And the men of knowledge have worked, have considered, and the fruit is rotting on the ground, and the decaying mash in the wine vat is poisoning the air. And taste the wineno grape flavor at all, just sulphur and tannic acid and alcohol. This little orchard will be a part of a great holding next year, for the debt will have choked the owner. This vineyard will belong to the bank. Only the great owners can survive, for they own the canneries, too. And four pears peeled and cut in half, cooked and canned, still cost fifteen cents. And the canned pears do not spoil.They will last for years. The decay spreads over the State, and the sweet smell is a great sorrow on the l and. Men who can graft the trees and make the seed fertile and big can find no way to let the hungry people eat their produce. Men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby their fruits may be eaten. And the failure hangs over the State like a great sorrow. The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground.The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruitand kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out.Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth. There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. 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 children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificatedied of malnutritionbecause the food must rot, must be forced to rot.The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze and in the eyes of the people there is the failure and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.