![”THE GRAPES OF WRATH (1939; awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1940). Inevitably also 1962 Nobel Literature Laureate's tale of the migrating Joad family is surely the most emblematic novel of the American Great Depression. This [collector’s] pristine copy of the first state carries with it the exceedingly rare advance review slip with an author painting by Stjernstrom, first appearing as the frontispiece for the Lewis Gannett's edition and also the1939 "’John Steinbeck: Personal and Bibliographical Notes.’"](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/913f0b6/2147483647/strip/true/crop/728x1024+0+0/resize/840x1182!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F5d%2Ff4%2F6478fdb44fa2a0faf908d4d61d3f%2F005-01-16-26-boo0kbyte-reading-and-re-reading-this-classic-berzanskis-the-grapes-of-wrath-card.jpg)
Reading and Re-reading This Classic
by Cheryl Berzanskis
Hello. My name is Cheryl Berzanskis and I’m speaking to you from my local stretch of the Mother Road, Amarillo.
High Plains Public Radio’s 2026 Spring Read features that beloved highway, all 2,400 miles of Route 66 across eight states and three time zones. As the historic highway turns 100, BookBytes aims to celebrate its past and present influence on America.
I first heard of Route 66 due to a sixties television show of the same name. Then I heard a jazzy 1946 song popularized by the Nat King Cole Trio entitled “(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66.” Then I moved to the Panhandle and learned everyone here calls our historic stretch of the highway Sixth Street. It is definitely a place where the kicks still exist.
The connection I cherish most to Route 66 is the winner of the 1939 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, The Grapes of Wrath. The John Steinbeck novel has informed our understanding of America, of individual and collective human endurance, economics and just how shabbily we can treat our fellow man. Maybe I’m not qualified to say this, and I admit that, but I think it is a work of genius. I re-read The Grapes of Wrath last year and not a day has gone by that I haven’t thought about some aspect of the 30-chapter book.
Steinbeck introduced us to the Joads, a poor tenant farmer family from Sallisaw, Okla., who joined an estimated 2.5 million people uprooted by a combination of the Dust Bowl and Great Depression. They, like thousands from our listening area, headed west in search of a better life.
Tom Joad, Ma Joad, Rose of Sharon, Jim Casy and others provided us with more than a sad tale. They embodied characters that spoke both to the time and the ages.
Tom left behind individual self interest in favor of collective welfare. Ma Joad became “the citadel of the family.” Rose of Sharon nursed a starving man in the book’s final scene. And in Chapter 4 Jim Casy invited us to find spirituality through human connection, a Steinbeck theme.
"I figgered, ‘maybe it’s all men an’ all women we love; maybe that’s the Holy Sperit – the human sperit – the whole shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul ever’body’s a part of.’ Now I sat there thinkin’ it, an’ all of a suddent — I knew it. I knew it so deep down that it was true, and I still know it.”
As the Depression deepened and the Dust Bowl blew harder, the refugee farmers and families sank deeper and deeper into despair. Hunger and illness grew more prevalent and hope more elusive until we reached the most important lines of the book, “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.”
Still between scenes of hard choices, disappointment and death, Steinbeck sparked bits of hope in humanity and one scene from Chapter 15 was memorialized by the late Kris Kristofferson in his 1982 “Here Comes That Rainbow Again.”
Mae, a waitress toiling in a roadside cafe, sold two nickel candies for a penny to a couple of nameless hungry Okie boys. In turn two truck drivers, whose pie, coffee and tip came to a quarter each rounded up to fifty cents a piece and refused Mae’s offer of change. Her gruff compassion toward the kids became her reward and in the song’s rainbow we glimpsed hope.
Happy birthday, Route 66.
For the Spring Radio Readers Book Club on High Plains Public Radio, this has been Cheryl Berzanskis.
A profile in a publication of the Panhandle Chapter of the Texas Master Naturalist, Cheryl Berzanskis introduced herself as having been a Mater Naturalist since 2016. She grew up in Georgia but moved to Texas in 1981. Cheryl explains that she came to love “the macro beauty of the plains and the secrets of the canyons.” Having spent a lot of time in Palo Duro Canyon, Berzanskis became a leader of student hikes, citing the fact that the work brings joy and meaning to her life. She is a regular contributor of Radio Readers BookBytes.
