The Vacuity and Simultaneous Control of Wealth in John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath"

From the start of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, I was immediately struck by the nearly tangible presence of poverty in the novel.  In fact, Steinbeck is bluntly allegorical in his use of tractors as an image to represent the cold, metallic, and ignorant impersonality of banks, the rich, and industrialization over the poor farmer families of the dust bowl region of the American midwest.  In doing so, he creates a tangible tension between the bucolic, salt-of-the-earth farmers like the Joads who live in a poverty that is powerful yet not without solidarity and the unfeeling and inhuman elite, bankers who strip farmers like the Joads of their land, and in that, so much more.

However, one passage in the novel has stood out to me as a true indicator statement on the role of wealth.  In chapter 18, a fellow westbound traveler tells Pa Joad about a "newspaper fella near the coast" who has a million acres of land (206). Instead of being enviously amazed by this "newspaper fella" (who is a real life reference to William Randolph Hearst), Pa and Casy agree that such displays of excess, such unnecessary wealth, are merely signifiers of a personal disappointment, a fear of dying, and a lonely emptiness. Casy says poignantly:

If he needs a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to me he needs it 'cause he feels awful poor inside hisself, and if he's poor in hisself, there ain't no million acres gonna make him feel rich, an' maybe he's disappointed that nothin' he can do'll make him feel rich-- not rich like Mis' Wilson was when she give her tent when Grampa died.  I ain't tryin; to preach no sermon, but I never seen nobody that's busy as a prairie dog collectin' stuff that wasn't disappointed (207)

It seems in the novel that, despite the power wealth has over the Joads, it is not something that they necessarily lust after.  Instead, to have too much is to try and fill a void within with the material in a way that is impossibly quixotic. On the other hand, true wealth is the ability to give to others in need.  Mis' Wilson's ability to give her tent to dying Grampa was far more significant and meaningful than the lonely wealth of  men like Hearst. The Joads and Casy may speak with improper grammar.  They may be covered in dirt and rags, and they may get swindled out of selling all their possessions for lack of ability to negotiate, but their senses of selves are far more rich than even the wealthiest robber baron.  In essence, poverty in The Grapes of Wrath is not a lack of money or possessions, but a lack of control to define personal happiness.  Farmers like the Joads, people tied almost intrinsically to the land they were born on, understand who they are thoroughly and organically.  Their identities are not predicated on a number in their bank account or on performing their class for others (like so many other characters we have seen throughout the semester).  It is the banks that take away the land that impose poverty and lack on the Joads.  It is the anonymous faces who have never felt the land with their bare hands who ultimately come to link possessions with happiness in a way that, as evidenced by the scared and empty "newspaper fella," kills the self and the soul irrevocably.