Citations

Rédouane Abouddahab
Concours 2008,
Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath



Le roman naturaliste :

J’en suis donc parvenu à ce point : le roman expérimental est une conséquence de l’évolution scientifique du siècle; il continue et complète la physiologie, qui elle-même s’appuie sur la chimie et la physique ; il substitue à l’étude de l’homme abstrait, de l’homme métaphysique, l’étude de l’homme naturel, soumis aux lois physico-chimiques et déterminé par les influences du milieu; il est en un mot la littérature de notre âge scientifique, comme la littérature classique et romantique a correspondu à un âge de scolastique et de théologie. (Emile Zola, Le Roman expérimental, 1888)


Dust Bowl:

Black Blizzards was the name given to the one thousand foot high dust storms that overtook the Midwest during the Great Depression. It all started when farmers of the area in and around the panhandle of Texas abused the land with their poor farming techniques and with the destruction of the original buffalo grass by replacing it with wheat crops.
Failure to take proper care of the soil they were using resulted in the land losing moisture which made it vulnerable to wind erosion. Besides land being destroyed by farmers, the rest of the land in the area that was rich in grass was also destroyed by overgrazing of livestock. The combination of this and a major drought in the 1930’s led to the tragic events of the Dust Bowl.
Paul Bonnifield, “The Dust Bowl, Men, Dirt and Depression”


L’« horreur économique » :

D’emblée, résumons ici le propos du livre : quelques lignes suffiront. L’économie, entendons par là l’économie libérale de la société postindustrielle, ne peut fonctionner qu’au prix de l’exclusion du marché du travail d’une masse, de plus en plus importante, de chômeurs. Or, dans une culture centrée sur la valorisation du travail et de l’efficacité économique, les sans-emploi ne peuvent bénéficier d’une reconnaissance sociale qui leur conférerait dignité et droit. Le prix de cette exclusion sociale, le dépérissement physique de milliers, de centaines de milliers, voire de millions d’hommes et de femmes, à la vie fragilisée, littéralement raccourcie, comme le démontre, par exemple, le tableau comparatif des indicateurs de santé. Ainsi l’économie libérale, immatérielle et devenue anonyme, ne se contente plus d’exploiter et de détruire nature et homme, elle exclut de l’humanité ceux qui ne peuvent s’intégrer dans la logique marchande. Au terme de ce processus, l’extermination, possible, envisageable, de ces êtres devenus “ inutiles ” parce que inemployables.
Patrice Deramaix à propos de L’horreur économique, par Viviane Forrester (Fayard, 1996).

If [,] as has been stated by a large grower, our agriculture requires the creation and maintenance of a peon class, then […] California agriculture is economically unsound under a democracy.
Steinbeck, Harvest Gypsies [1936; reprint, Berkeley: Heyday, 1988]


Populisme, racisme :

The migrants are needed, and they are hated. Arriving in a district they find the dislike always meted out by the resident to the foreigner, the outlander. . . . The migrants are hated for the following reasons, that they are ignorant and dirty people, that they are carriers of disease, that they increase the necessity for police and the tax bill for schooling in a community, and that if they are allowed to organize they can, simply by refusing to work, wipe out a season’s crop.
John Steinbeck, Harvest Gypsies, 20.


Censure

WHEREAS, John Steinbeck’s work of fiction, "The Grapes of Wrath", has offended our citizenry by falsely implying that many of our fine people are a low, ignorant, profane and blasphemous type living in a vicious and filthy manner, and
WHEREAS, Steinbeck presents our public officials, law enforcement office and civil administrators, business men, farmers, and ordinary citizens as inhumane vigilantes, breathing class hatred and divested of sympathy or human decency or understanding toward a great, and to us unwelcome, economic problem brought by an astounding influx of refugees, indigent farmers, who were dusted or tractored or forclosed [sic] out of Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Arkansas, Missouri, Texas and others of our sister states, and
WHEREAS, Steinbeck chose to ignore the education, recreation, hospitalization, welfare and relief services, unexcelled by any other political subdivision in the United States made available by Kern County to every person resident in Kern County, and
WHEREAS, "Grapes of Wrath" is filled with profanity, lewd, foul, and obscene language unfit for use in American homes, therefore, be it
RESOLVED, that we, the BOARD OF SUPERVISORS, in defense of our free enterprises and of people who have been unduly wronged request that the production of the motion picture film, "Grapes of Wrath", adapted from the Steinbeck novel, not be completed by the Twentieth Century-Fox film corporation and request that use and possession and circulation of the novel, "Grapes of Wrath", be banned from our library and schools.