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Editor’s Column

2022; Penn State University Press; Volume: 19; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5325/steinbeckreview.19.1.vi

1754-6087

Barbara A. Heavilin, with Kathleen Hicks,

American and British Literature Analysis

And I have feltA presence that disturbs me with the joyOf something far more deeply interfused,Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns.—William Wordsworth, “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey” Franciscan friar Richard Rohr defines “liminal space” as a “sacred space where the old world is able to fall apart, and a bigger world is revealed.” It is a threshold between the “‘what was; and the ‘next.’ It is a place . . . where all transformation takes place” (qtd. in “What is a Liminal Space?”). Hanan Parvez describes it as “a space between spaces, . . . a boundary between two points in time, space, or both. It’s the middle ground between two grounds, the mid-structure between two structures.” Or, more poetically, as William Wordsworth puts it in “Tintern Abbey,” it is a space interfused with joy and light.John Steinbeck has an affinity for such places that exist on the boundaries, in liminal spaces. One of his most memorable liminal spaces appears, for instance, in the ending of The Grapes of Wrath. It occurs on a wintry rainy day in California when Rose of Sharon sits on a cold barn floor, clad only in a borrowed, dirty “comforter,” breastfeeding a starving man: “She looked up and across the barn, and her lips came together and smiled mysteriously” (453). Having already endured the woes of the dispossessed in an unwelcoming land and the loss of a malnourished baby in childbirth, she faces a future offering little or no hope for better times, at least while winter lasts. The narrator in Robert Burns’s “To a Mouse” depicts just such a moment, such a condition: “I backward cast my eye, / On prospects drear! /An’ forward, tho I canna see, / I guess and fear!” (ll. 43–46). Nonetheless, Rose of Sharon is in a liminal moment in which she herself is in control and makes her own hard choice to give what she can to alleviate the misery of another, perhaps even to save his life. In “Tintern Abbey,” Romantic poet William Wordsworth records his experience of a liminal space as a time “when . . . with an eye made quiet by the power / Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, / We see into the life of things” (ll. 47–49). And the reader wonders, whether alone in the quietness of the barn, rain pouring down outside, did Rose of Sharon experience joy and harmony in giving the milk of life to a starving man? Did she see “into the life of things”? Steinbeck’s liminal spaces leave his readers with questions.Among numerous such liminal spaces throughout his works, another highly significant one occurs in this same novel. The Joads have arrived at Weedpatch Camp—itself a liminal place on their journey between the harsh realities of dispossession and the comforts of humane treatment. In this oasis-like place, there are toilets, showers, and sinks; Saturday night dances; self-government; kindness; and people helping one another. Here Tom Joad meets Timothy and Wilkie Wallace. The time is early dawn, with light increasing steadily as the scenario unfolds. Although Wilkie’s girl/wife is unnamed, she is a central figure in the scene. Rising early to assess their surroundings, Tom Joad surveys the line of tents in the camp and sees the light of an iron stove and a girl working about the stove, saw that she carried a baby on her crooked arm, and that the baby was nursing, its head up under the girl’s shirtwaist. And the girl moved about, poking the fire, shifting the rusty stove lids to make a better draft, opening the oven door; and all the time the baby sucked, and the mother shifted it deftly from arm to arm. The baby didn’t interfere with her work or with the quick gracefulness of her movements. And the orange fire licked out of the stove cracks and threw flickering reflections on the tent. (289) Tom smells bacon frying on the stovetop and bread baking in the oven and reaches out his hands toward the stove to warm them. The girl nods to acknowledge his presence, her braids jerking with the movement and wishes him a good morning, as she continues to tend the bacon frying in the pan. Two freshly washed and groomed men, father and son, emerge from the tent, both dressed in new dungaree pants and coats. They greet Tom as they, too, warm their hands at the stove.Still, the girl works, only pausing to put the baby down so that she can tie her braids together, and they swing rhythmically as she scoops up the bacon and places a panful of “big high biscuits” on a storage box used as a table. The younger man says “‘Kee-rist’ softly,” in awe at their blessed abundance (290). The older man invites Tom to sit down and eat with them. Half statement, half prayer of gratefulness, he says, “We got plenty—thank God!” Remarking on the delicious aroma of bacon, gravy, and those mile-high biscuits some farm women excel at baking, the men squat around the packing box.Wilkie, the younger man, asks Tom if he has work. “Jus’ got in las’ night. Ain’t had no chance to look around,” Tom responds. Wilkie tells him that they have worked for twelve days, and the girl adds, “They even got new clothes.” With the food now placed on the box/table, she, too, squats beside it, and like a poetic refrain, the sentence recurs: “The baby still nursed, its head up under the girl’s shirtwaist” (290). And again, there is a blessing of sorts as the older man eats and chews and gulps and swallows: “God Almighty, it’s good!” he exclaims as he again fills his mouth. The younger man explains to Tom that they have been eating like this for twelve days, never missing a meal. “Almost frantically, he refills his plate” (291). They drink a cup of scalding hot coffee and then another.Dawn is advancing, with a “reddish gleam” in the light: “The father and son stopped eating. They were facing the east and their faces were lighted by the dawn. The image of the mountain and the light coming over it were reflected in their eyes” (291). “The mountain and the light” here are reminiscent of the transfiguration of Christ, and this “mountain-top” experience is a liminal space that is filled with goodness and grace as the younger man offers to try to get Tom a job working with them: “We’ll try to get you workin’ if you want” (291).Gratefully, Tom accepts their offer. As they walk to work together, the Wallaces share a grim tale. And this story is the boundary on the other side of the blessings of this liminal space: arriving ten months before, right after a flood, they had come close to starvation and were forced to sell their car for a pittance to get food. The Wallace men are well aware that their work will not last long. Tom protests, “Why in hell you gonna git me on? I’ll make it shorter. What you cuttin’ your own throat for?” The older man answers, “Got no sense,” I guess.” (293) Still, intuitively, a careful reader knows why. Like the Good Samaritan, neither the Joads nor the Wallaces have ever passed by on the other side when there is a person in need. And the astute reader hears Ma Joad’s voice in the backdrop as she insists they take the preacher Casy with them on the California trek: “I never heerd tell of no Joads nor no Hazletts, neither, ever refusin’ food and shelter or a lift on the road to anybody that asked” (104). “Nor no Wallaces neither,” the reader may instinctively add.Here the liminal space ends with a closing boundary formed by the near prospect of the Wallaces’ job running out, wages diminishing from thirty cents an hour to twenty-five cents, the kind farmer who hired them in danger of losing his farm as the Farmers’ Association threatens to withhold a loan for planting his crop if he does not comply with their wage guidelines for migrants. Further, the Wallaces’ story of hospitality and generosity points toward the novel’s ending in that barn with Rose of Sharon’s nursing a stranger, whose life hangs by a thread. When the work runs out and their money is exhausted, the reader wonders what will happen to the Wallace girl/mother’s baby, suckling at her breast so sweetly in this liminal space.As customary with Steinbeck, there are no easy answers—just human dilemmas and problems brought to the readers’ awareness, left squarely on the readers’ own conscience. As he writes in Travels with Charley, Steinbeck believes in “the essential saintliness of humans” to come to the aid of those in need, to comfort and assist, like the caregivers in the COVID pandemic who work past exhaustion, placing themselves at risk to alleviate the suffering of others, to save lives (186). Like those people and like the Wallaces and Joads, who give of themselves to create those sacred liminal spaces “where the old world is able to fall apart, and a bigger world is revealed.” The “bigger world,” of course, may seem simplistic on the surface; for it is a world in which there is love for one another, caring for one another. The mind and heart of Steinbeck always embraced just such a world, creating liminal spaces to show its existence in our midst.The lead article of this issue of Steinbeck Review features “‘The Land Doesn’t Stretch’: Fecundity, Agriculture, and Settler Visions of California in To a God Unknown,” in which Daniel Lanza Rivers examines the complex interplay among environmental, historical, agro-industrial, and narrative factors to show that the novel is Steinbeck’s earliest sustained critique of shortsighted agricultural practices in the state. Foundational to that critique is the historical dichotomy between settlers’ idealized vision of California as a boundless, resource-laden paradise and the material reality of its environment that is historically marked by cyclical periods of flooding and significant drought and scarcity. Rivers shows Steinbeck’s alignment of his narrative with California’s cyclical climate through Joseph Wayne’s initial settling of his fertile ranch; then through a period of growth in the development of his own family; and, finally, through the onset of drought, which brings about the destruction of Wayne’s lineage. Rivers also shows that the Waynes’ experiences are reflective of historical cycles in the settlement of California and patterns in agribusiness as well. He concludes by recommending the novel be taught more often since its complex interplay among history, environment, and narrative help readers better contemplate their futures within the Anthropocene.Next, in “Steinbeck’s Self-Revelations in East of Eden: A Family Heritage,” Sister Mary Esther Potts explores what she defines as the quasi-autobiographical nature of East of Eden, noting the work contains significant autobiographical content, though it lacks traditional autobiographical form. She shows how autobiographical content works its way into the novel through Steinbeck’s positioning of himself as the narrator and in the Hamilton family’s representation of familial guilt on his maternal side and the Trask family’s rejection of a child on his paternal side. Drawing on the Cain and Abel story and human psychology, she observes that Hamilton and Trask characters reflect the negative consequences of guilt and rejection shared by Steinbeck and his father. She argues that Steinbeck, like his own father, saddled his sons with a damaged psyche brought on by rejection and a lack of attention and love, which plagued them into adulthood. She concludes on a positive note, finding that like Steinbeck, who had a successful career, there is evidence that his sons were able to work through some of these challenges in their adult lives.Also drawing on psychology, Carter Davis Johnson’s “Beyond Melodrama: A Jungian Reevaluation of Steinbeck’s East of Eden” finds that greater understanding of the ways in which Steinbeck integrates principles of Jungian psychology into East of Eden sheds light on the complexity of both his narrative and characters, which Johnson believes critics have been too quick to dismiss as symbolically heavy-handed, weakly allegorical, and overly melodramatic. Instead, Johnson walks readers through Steinbeck’s careful application of Jung’s archetypes, particularly through his theory of the collective unconscious. He also observes how Steinbeck judiciously creates only one truly symbolic character, Kate, for the specific purpose of critiquing the Freudian view of sexuality. Johnson believes that such psychological exploration of the text reveals overlooked depths of complexity in Steinbeck’s still relevant and enduring epic.This issue’s Intercalary section includes three unique perspectives on The Grapes of Wrath. In “‘Ugly, coarse, and brutal’: James M. Buchanan on The Grapes of Wrath and the Political Economy of Farm Labor Migration,” Daniel Kuehn uses economics Nobel laureate James Buchanan’s 1940 review of The Grapes of Wrath for his college newspaper in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, to consider Steinbeck’s influence on young writers at the time. Kuehn compares and contrasts the experiences of Steinbeck’s Joads with those of Buchanan while he was farming in central Tennessee and his perspective on farm labor migration that he discussed later during his doctoral studies. While there are similarities, Buchanan focuses more specifically on barriers that prevented Southern farmers from being able to migrate successfully. By his analysis, Kuehn depicts both how Steinbeck’s political views shifted over time and how his writing inspired another writer’s journey to question America’s economic system’s impact on people—a testament to Steinbeck’s influence, both then and now.In “Laborers Lost in The Grapes of Wrath” Thomas J. Nez posits a new perspective for examining the critique of capitalism extant in The Grapes of Wrath, thereby responding to contemporary criticism which charges, at its heart, that the novel is not sufficiently systematic in its condemnation of capitalism. Nez focuses on how The Grapes of Wrath wrestles with the production of excess labor within the capitalist system and its attendant problems. Drawing on Karl Marx’s General Law of Capital Accumulation, defined as the tendency to generate a population of jobless workers, Nez examines the ways in which Steinbeck’s novel probes how economic, social, and government structures deal with this population and how this population attempts to adapt to their ongoing exclusion. Nez pays particular attention to the nuances of the intercalary chapters and the trajectory of Tom Joad’s development in his analysis. Ultimately, he concludes, as does Steinbeck’s novel, that Rose of Sharon’s selfless, interpersonal, compassionate act is “the only human and humane way to approach the crippling dilemma” of California’s agribusiness between its need for workers and its stubborn refusal to pay living wages.Finally, in another article dealing with displaced populations, in “Algerian Immigrants: Contemporary Joads,” Chaker Mohamed Ben Ali draws comparisons between the Joads and Algerian harragas or “burners,” migrants who, like the characters in The Grapes of Wrath, are literally and figuratively forced to burn their past lives to undertake their challenging journeys, which typically end similarly, with disappointment and distress. Mohamed Ben Ali finds these striking parallels, among others, to be evidence of The Grapes of Wrath’s universality and of “Steinbeck’s sure understanding of conflicts between insiders and outsiders, the haves and the have-nots, the smugly comfortable and the suffering who seek better lives for themselves and their families.”Concluding this issue, Peter Van Coutren’s “Steinbeck Today” highlights contemporary happenings of interest to Steinbeck scholars and fans alike. Van Coutren’s “Bibliography” similarly captures important Steinbeck-related publications over the last year. Finally, Cecilia Donohue and Charles Ethridge provide reviews of interest to Steinbeck scholars. Donohue reviews Nathaniel Philbrick’s Travels with George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy. She notes the interesting and entertaining similarities between Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley: In Search of America and Philbrick’s retracing of George Washington’s postinaugural East Coast tour. Among other parallels, both books incorporate a dog as a star character, and both comment on troubling race relations as an ongoing challenge to the nation. And though their approaches to their trips were quite different—Steinbeck’s being a bit more laissez-faire and Philbrick’s more strategic—Philbrick seems to channel the spirit of Steinbeck’s journey in several ways, which Donohue notes readers will appreciate. Readers should also greatly appreciate Barbara A. Heavilin’s new Steinbeck Bibliography published online by Oxford University Press. Ethridge’s review praises the strategic selections, careful organization, and concise, specific annotations in Heavilin’s work, which will be of important service to both novice and veteran Steinbeck scholars. Ethridge concludes that Heavilin’s careful and detailed work, besides being impressively comprehensive, is fun to read and sure to be appreciated.