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  • A “note . . . of great objective purity”:Steinbeck’s Evocative Language of Heart and Mind in The Grapes of Wrath
  • Barbara A. Heavilin (bio)

There is at times in Steinbeck an experience that I think of as purely existential and native or basic to him, beyond cavil. It can be seen in a note of his on an early morning encounter with some farm laborers camped by the road. The note is of great objective purity, and is also most humanly attractive, . . . so beautifully natural and yet so vulnerable (v).

—E. W. Tedlock and C. V. Wicker

Ploddingly, slowly, at snail-pace, I am re-reading The Grapes of Wrath for an upcoming book project and looking especially closely for instances of what E. W. Tedlock and C. V. Wicker describe as this novel’s “note . . . of great objective purity, . . . most humanly attractive, . . . so beautifully natural and yet so vulnerable.” In describing the novel’s haunting power, these critics find themselves left finally with a “feeling of pathos and, perhaps, one of insight” (v, emphasis added). Both “feeling” and “insight” are outside the domain of linear, critical, analytical thinking. Rather, both draw on an emotional intelligence that involves the heart and goes beyond analysis to an intuitive understanding—an “aha” moment of inspiration. “Art,” these critics avow, “requires a special love and tolerance.” In his drawing of Ma Joad especially, Steinbeck evokes such a feeling and such an insight. Her actions, words, and gestures define her not only as the quintessential mother, but also as a heroic person of great magnanimity and compassion. Her thoughts are always of her dispossessed family and, hence, of essential food and shelter. As they leave the government camp at Weedpatch, she gives each one a cold biscuit—the last of the food. When they arrive at the infamous Hooper Ranch, they all pick peaches—children included—for an entire day without further sustenance. [End Page V]

That night, Ma’s haggling with the ranch’s grocery clerk over the exorbitant price of food reveals in her character that “note . . . of great objective purity”—“humanly attractive,” “beautifully natural,” “so vulnerable.” She discovers that all of the company prices have been jacked up because the ranch is a long way from town—hamburger, potatoes, bread, and coffee all several cents higher than town prices. Knowing full well that this family cannot afford gas money, the grocery clerk responds flippantly, mockingly, as he tells her to shop in town if she doesn’t like these prices. Ma’s first response reveals what once must have been a quick temper when she was younger: she moves “menacingly toward him,” fists clenched. But wisdom and insight govern behavior as “Ma looked down at her knuckles. ‘What is this?’ she asked softly. ‘You own this here store?’” The pronoun “this” has no clear referent—does it refer to her reaction to seeing her own clenched fists? Or does it refer to the clerk’s situation that prompts his smart-alecky responses to this proud, genteel woman? Or perhaps both? She knows he does not own the store, and her anger quickly changes to compassion, as, gently, she reprimands him:

“Doin’ a dirty thing like this. Shames ya, don’t it? Got to act flip, huh?” Her voice was gentle. The clerk watched her, fascinated. He didn’t answer. “That’s how it is,” Ma said finally. “Forty cents for meat, fifteen for bread, quarter for potatoes. That’s eighty cents. Coffee?”

Now addressing her politely with the honorific “ma’am,” he responds, “twenty cents the cheapest, ma’am” (375).

Brought up in Episcopalian Sunday school and immersed in biblical tenets, Steinbeck here creates an enactment of Proverbs:

A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger. . . .A wholesome tongue is a tree of life. . . .The lips of the wise disperse knowledge.

(15: 1, 4, 7)

Despite bitter circumstances—the clerk’s doing “a dirty thing” in obedience to his employer’s orders and Ma Joad’s desperately trying to provide food for her starving family—the scene ends with one of those instances that Tedlock and Wicker describe as “most humanly attractive, . . . so beautifully natural and yet so...

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