[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 15]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 21184]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          THE GRAPES OF WRATH

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                            HON. SUSAN DAVIS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, October 16, 2002

  Mrs. DAVIS of California. Mr. Speaker, I rise to celebrate the 
settling of California as part of the California Council for the 
Humanities literature project. It is a pleasure to join fellow 
Californians in reading a common work, John Steinbeck's ``The Grapes of 
Wrath.'' It is a project rich not only as a piece of literature that 
explores the history of a specific group of immigrants to California 
but also the common immigrant experience.
  So many of us are only a generation or two away from that immigrant 
experience. My grandparents came to this country from Lithuania--also 
migrating to a land of hoped-for prosperity.
  I have selected some passages from Chapter 17 detailing that heart-
breaking period of traveling to the unknown new land and also the 
wonderful experience of developing community that came from sharing 
that challenge.

       The cars of the migrant people crawled out of the side 
     roads onto the great cross-country highway, and they took the 
     migrant way to the West. In the daylight they scuttled like 
     bugs to the westward; and as the dark caught them, they 
     clustered like bugs near to shelter and to water. And because 
     they were lonely and perplexed, because they had all come 
     from a place of sadness and worry and defeat, and because 
     they were all going to a new mysterious place, they huddled 
     together; they talked together; they shared their lives, 
     their food, and the things they hoped for in the new country. 
     Thus it might be that one family camped near a spring, and 
     another camped for the spring and for company, and a third 
     because two families had pioneered the place and found it 
     good. And when the sun went down, perhaps twenty families and 
     twenty cars were there.
       In the evening a strange thing happened: the twenty 
     families became one family, the children were the children of 
     all. The loss of home became one loss, and the golden time in 
     the West was one dream And it might be that a sick child 
     threw despair into the hearts of twenty families, of a 
     hundred people; that a birth there in a tent kept a hundred 
     people quiet and awe-struck through the night and filled a 
     hundred people with the birth-joy in the morning. A family 
     which the night before had been lost and fearful might search 
     its goods to find a present for a new baby. In the evening, 
     sitting about the fires, the twenty were one. They grew to be 
     units of the camps, units of the evenings and the nights. A 
     guitar unwrapped from a blanket and tuned-and the songs, 
     which were all of the people, were sung in the nights. Men 
     sang the words, and women hummed the tunes.
       Every night a world created, complete with furniture---
     friends made and enemies established; a world complete with 
     braggarts and with cowards, with quiet men, with humble men, 
     with kindly men. Every night relationships that make a world, 
     established; and every morning the world torn down like a 
     circus.
       At first the families were timid in the building and 
     tumbling worlds, but gradually the technique of building 
     worlds became their technique. Then leaders emerged, then 
     laws were made, then codes came into being. And as the worlds 
     moved westward they were more complete and better furnished, 
     for their builders were more experienced in building them.
       The families learned what rights must be observed--the 
     right of privacy in the tent; . . . the right to talk and to 
     listen; the right to refuse help or to accept, to offer help 
     or to decline it; the right of son to court and daughter to 
     be courted; the right of the hungry to be fed; the rights of 
     the pregnant and the sick to transcend all other rights.
       And the families learned, although no one told them, what 
     rights are monstrous and must be destroyed. . . .
       And as the worlds moved westward, rules became laws, 
     although no one told the families. It is unlawful to foul 
     near the camp; it is unlawful to eat good rich food near one 
     who is hungry, unless he is asked to share.
       And with the laws, the punishments. . .
       The families moved westward, and the technique of building 
     the worlds improved so that the people could be safe in their 
     worlds; and the form was so fixed that a family acting in the 
     rules knew it was safe in the rules.
       There grew up government in the worlds, with leaders, with 
     elders. A man who was wise found that his wisdom was needed 
     in every camp; a man who was a fool could not change his 
     folly with his world. And a kind of insurance developed in 
     these nights. A man with food fed a hungry man, and thus 
     insured himself against hunger. And when a baby died a pile 
     of silver coins grew at the door flap, for a baby must be 
     well buried, since it has had nothing, else of life. An old 
     man may be left in a potter's field, but not a baby.

     

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