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 fruit- and 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 certificate- died of malnutrition- because 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.
really such an incredibly powerful passage. I don’t even need to read the rest of the book
But you should lol
It’s really deserved its accolades. Furthermore, there are some really interesting parts outside of this where Marxist concepts are explained in these (in my opinion) really engaging side chapters which offer greater insight into the surrounding world and situation of the time.
If you haven’t read The Grapes of Wrath, you really should. It goes hard, and it’s obscenely relevant despite being like 80 years old.
You just made me wonder if I owned anything that was older than Biden.
I struggled to think of anything for a hot minute, but remembered my great grandmother passing me down her antique mirror.
Problem is that I don’t know when she got it and I think she was born some time in the 1920s, so I think it’s likely I don’t have anything older than our fucking corpse emperor.
Edit: technically I have some quartz geodes but they got set up for display a few decades ago.
The movie made only a couple years after the book was written is solid as well. I work with food and it’s a book I literally think about every day.
Also, it inspired Springsteen’s Ghost of Tom Joad, which is 🔥🔥🔥.
All these streaming websites are wild for charging $4 to watch a movie made in 1940.
Here’s an archive link for the Grapes of Wrath movie, no torrenting or downloads required.
crazy how they have the food, but people can’t eat because of pieces of paper. worse, nowadays its just variables on a computer system. bits and bytes stored in some hard disks somewhere. i cannot overstate how this blows my mind so i’m not going to even try.
brazil is one of the biggest producers of food yet a huge chunk of the population is going through food insecurity right now. we have H U G E amounts of unused, deforested, ready to use land and we could probably feed the entire planet. by ourselves if we really wanted to. just sitting on the hands of someone like this to use in service of the aforementioned bits instead. (no but actually him, hes literally one of them)
dunno about you but i think we can do much better, folks. fuck capitalism. is there a fate worse than death we can make for capitalism and its perpetrators? maybe slow painful death? this one made me kind of angry and i needed sleep instead how the fuck am i supposed to sleep now.
The Line
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 fruit—and 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 certificates—died of malnutrition—because 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 quicklime, 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.
Edit: Pasted the actual section from the text [Penguin Classics e-book edition from 2000]; serves me right for grabbing someone’s half-assed transcription
Lol, you’re missing some of the best parts.
spoiler
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 fruit- and 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 certificate- died of malnutrition- because 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.
I tried a few AI text to speech generators, but they are all paywalled, fake, or don’t work
Fixed it. Also, weird – yours has different paragraph breaks from my e-book copy.
](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/52470634-c3bb-4ac3-a3c9-edf39119a2c3.jpeg){kind=link}