The Pakistani-British intellectual and writer Tariq Ali Khan is quoted as saying, “history rarely repeats itself, but its echoes never go away.” In this essay, we will consider how some of these “echoes” stretch back to the era of Steinbeck’s novel, and further.
The title of Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath is allusive-- it is taken from “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”, which was an anthem composed just before the US Civil War that Union soldiers often sang as they marched off to battle. Given this, it is fascinating to read The Grapes of Wrath at our own historical moment: just as Steinbeck was evoking and remembering a historical moment 80 years before his time, we are now forced to confront the possibility that COVID may be our own generation’s “Dust Bowl” moment.
For this essay, I want you to select a thread that runs through these 160 years of American history-- from the Civil War, through Steinbeck’s time, to our own. This essay may be written in a number of ways: as a formal, academic essay; as a reflection piece based on your own life and experiences; as a fictional piece in which you write a “chapter” of your own “COVID novel”... be creative!
Here is a (partial) list of topics you might choose. Of course, if you can identify another topic that applies, feel free to do so:
Labor, slavery (chattel, wage, debt), and the economic underclass;
Internal political tensions within American society;
The evolving American “experiment” and the role of struggle in that experiment;
Migrations and their role in shaping American society;
Presidential power and the federal management of crisis;
Environmental “stewardship” and our effects on the land, climate, geography and demography of the US
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Some articles or readings of interest:
https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2016/04/grapes-of-wrath/477897/
https://www.npr.org/2018/07/04/625351953/one-song-glory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Hymn_of_the_Republic
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2009/11/new-dust-bowl/
https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510311/embedded (the “Covering COVID) series