Publisher's Note: This diary appeared in your stream earlier today. This is a test to see if we can make it a "live" diary in which you can comment and rate. Please, if possible, feel free to do so. I would appreciate it. Thank you. "The Management"
(I originally published this diary last July when I was rereading The Grapes of Wrath for the AP English class I teach. The insight, progressive values, and especially the poetic eloquence expressed in this paragraph really grabbed me.
Today, with the labor battle raging in Wisconsin and other states and with the revolutions occurring in the Middle East, I feel Steinbeck's thoughts are more relevant and timely than ever. And, of course, just as poetic.
He tells us why fighting the "great owners" is important--and it's deeper than you think. If you want to skip my poor attempt at analysis and just read Steinbeck, skip to the bottom and read the paragraph.
Note: This is my first diary published with the Readers and Book Lovers group. A big thank you to Limelite for such helpful guidance. I have slightly revised the diary from its original form.)
I want to share one paragraph with you today. It's one of the most insightful political statements and some of the most beautiful poetry I have ever read. But it wasn't written by a politician or a poet. It was written by a novelist. And it isn't new. It's from The Grapes of Wrath by the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer John Steinbeck. The novel is the story of the prototypical "Okie" family, the Joads, and their migration from Oklahoma to California during the Great Depression's Dust Bowl Era (1930-1940). Wiki notes that "By 1940, 2.5 million people had moved out of the Plains states; of those, 200,000 moved to California."
The paragraph I want to share is really a poem, or perhaps more accurately, a hymn. It is both a revelation and an affirmation. It reveals the meaning of life and the nature of humanity. It affirms the value of struggle and activism. And it speaks today as clearly as it did in the 1930s.
Follow me below the crease to examine this amazing paragraph.
Steinbeck begins this paragraph at the opening of Chapter 14 by discussing the reaction of the West as the vast wave of immigrants from the Plains States breaks upon its metaphorical shores. Then Steinbeck goes much deeper, delving into the very nature of man. However, in examining his meaning, let's also appreciate Steinbeck's rhetoric. What we are really reading here is a poem, and I have taken the liberty to restructure the passage from prose to verse to try to illustrate that. (The words and punctuation are unchanged; only the arrangement on the page has been altered. A prose-structured version of the paragraph as it appears in the novel can be found at the end of this diary.)
Steinbeck opens his paragraph with five sentence fragments, each consisting of a noun--"western land", "Western States", "great owners" (twice), and "results"--and a descriptive phrase. The incomplete thoughts draw us forward, searching for revelation:
The western land,
nervous under the beginning change.
The Western States,
nervous as horses before a thunder storm.
The great owners,
nervous, sensing a change, knowing nothing of the nature of the change.
The great owners,
striking at the immediate thing, the widening government, the growing
labor unity;
striking at new taxes, at plans;
not knowing these things are
results, not causes.
Results, not causes;
results, not causes.
Steinbeck introduces us to the antagonist of the poem--the great owners, or what we might variously call today the Military-Industrial Complex, corporatists, or plutocrats. The great owners are either too ignorant or oblivious to understand that what they are fighting--government expansion, unionization, and taxes--are the effects of human unrest, not the cause of them. As long as the owners remain unenlightened, they will always be treating the symptoms of worker dissatisfaction, not the underlying disease.
Rhetorically, these sentence fragments are like the opening bars of a song, tantalizing us until the hypnotic repetition of the phrase "results, not causes" rocks us into the melody and the real lyric begins:
The causes lie deep and simply--
the causes are
a hunger in a stomach,
multiplied a million times;
a hunger in a single soul, hunger for joy and some security,
multiplied a million times;
muscles and mind aching to grow, to work, to create,
multiplied a million times.
The cause is, as Steinbeck goes on to explain, that every individual human--the millions, our protagonist--wants to live a fulfilling life. We hear echoes of both Walt Whitman and Abraham Maslow as Steinbeck sings his theme in full-throated voice now, clearly, poignantly. The repetition that follows provides the rhythm, the beat, before he soars to hit the highest poetic revelations:
The last clear definite function of man--
muscles aching to work,
minds aching to create beyond the single need--
this is man.
To build a wall,
to build a house,
a dam,
and in the wall and house and dam
to put something of Manself,
and to Manself take back something
of the wall,
the house,
the dam;
to take hard muscles from the lifting,
to take the clear lines and form from conceiving.
For man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe,
grows beyond his work,
walks up the stairs of his concepts,
emerges ahead of his accomplishments.
In his classic book Working, another Depression-influenced writer, Studs Terkel, illustrates this essential need of mankind, to work creatively, in the person of the satisfied stone mason, Carl Murray Bates. Bates is not a slave but a real man who loves his work and leaves a legacy of imaginative excellence. That creative purpose, along with basic physical and emotional needs, is what every person desires.
Another verse begins the affirmation that humans are constantly striving for the ideals of freedom, sufficiency, and self-actualization. That Utopian striving, although it may experience setbacks, is ultimately unstoppable:
This you may say of man--
when theories
change and crash,
when schools, philosophies,
when narrow dark alleys of thought,
national,
religious,
economic,
grow and disintegrate,
man reaches, stumbles forward,
painfully,
mistakenly sometimes.
Having stepped forward,
he may slip back,
but only half a step,
never the full step back.
We may take a step forward by abolishing slavery, for example, but then take a half step back to Jim Crow laws. But we never go back to slavery. Progress is made and progress endures. The war is long and battles will be lost along the way, but the outcome is inevitable--with one caveat: Steinbeck's surprising final, paradoxical notion that pain and death in the battle are the affirmations of humanity itself.
This you may say
and know it
and know it.
This you may know
when the bombs plummet out of the black planes on the market place,
when prisoners are stuck like pigs,
when the crushed bodies drain filthily in the dust.
You may know it in this way.
If the step were not being taken,
if the stumbling-forward ache were not alive,
the bombs would not fall,
the throats would not be cut.
Fear the time when the bombs stop falling
while the bombers live--
for every bomb is proof
that the spirit has not died.
And fear the time when the strikes stop
while the great owners live--
for every little beaten strike is proof
that the step is being taken.
And this you can know--
fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept,
for this one quality is the foundation of Manself,
and this one quality is man,
distinctive in the universe.
Fighting battles, even losing ones, with the plutocrats is, therefore, desirable--as long as the plutocrats exist. For if the fighting stops and the great owners remain in place, that means humankind has surrendered its "Manself"--its soul--and has become no more than animals. Armies and strikebreakers may cause suffering and death, but unless people are willing to suffer and die for "a concept," they are less than human. That willingness to die for a concept is the ultimate creative act of human beings. Love, justice, beauty--these abstract ideas do not exist unless people think them and live them. That is why, for the theists out there, God needs man to manifest these qualities as much as man needs God to inspire them. And for the atheists, obviously, that is why it is entirely up to humans to create paradise. Jesus and Gandhi and King knew it: No animal can create an idea--much less die for it.
Today, we find ourselves in the same old fight to advance humankind against the neofeudalistic overlords. We battle the great owners because we have to. We make a step of progress, and then we fall a half step back. But each step bends the arc of history toward that Utopian ideal of self-actualization for all. This is what progress is. This is what being a progressive means: Being willing to suffer and die for a concept; being willing to know that this is the long fight; being unwilling to give in to cynicism and despair in this fight. For if we ever give in, we have lost our humanity.
Since I can't set Steinbeck's paragraph to music, I'll turn to American songwriter John Mellancamp to put the paragraph's message in a song:
And here's the prose original:
The Western land, nervous under the beginning change. The Western States, nervous as horses before a thunder storm. The great owners, nervous, sensing a change, knowing nothing of the nature of the change. The great owners, striking at the immediate thing, the widening government, the growing labor unity; striking at new taxes, at plans; not knowing these things are results, not causes. Results, not causes; results, not causes. The causes lie deep and simply--the causes are a hunger in the stomach, multiplied a million times; a hunger in a single soul, hunger for joy and some security, multiplied a million times; muscles and mind aching to grow, to work, to create, multiplied a million times. The last clear definite function of man--muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need--this is man. To build a wall, to build a house, a dam, and in the wall and house and dam to put something of Manself, and to Manself take back something of the wall, the house, the dam; to take hard muscles from the lifting, to take the clear lines and form from conceiving. For man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments. This you may say of man--when theories change and crash, when schools, philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of thought, national, religious, economic, grow and disintegrate, man reaches, stumbles forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes. Having stepped forward, he may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back. This you may say and know it and know it. This you may know when the bombs plummet out of the black planes on the market place, when prisoners are stuck like pigs, when the crushed bodies drain filthily in the dust. You may know it in this way. If the step were not being taken, if the stumbling-forward ache were not alive, the bombs would not fall, the throats would not be cut. Fear the time when the bombs stop falling while the bombers live--for every bomb is proof that the spirit has not died. And fear the time when the strikes stop while the great owners live--for every little beaten strike is proof that the step is being taken. And this you can know--fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is the foundation of Manself, and this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe.
Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Penguin Books, 1992. Print. 204-205.
Photos courtesy Wiki