The Grapes of Wrath

[Johnny2X2X]

Watching it on TCM right now. It serves as a great reminder of what Liberals are fighting against. Without Liberalism, the work camps you see in the Grapes of Wrath would be a reality for the majority of the workers in the country.

I sure hope that the book is still required reading in schools today to show young people the Conservative vision for America. Labor camps with barbed wire fences around them, slave wages, and company stores are the logical result of conservative economics.

[SheLiberal]

1. Not in Texas

I have 5 children 25 to 16 move through the Texas public school system and none have been required to read Grapes of Wrath. I am not surprised but saddened, the end of this movies always brings me to tears. People should never forget this history but I am afraid we have.

[Johnny2X2X]

2. Agree

Never forget this history or we will be doomed to repeat it. When the people and the workers are stripped of thier right to organize the result is shown in the Grapes of Wrath.

[packman]

3. On reflection

I believe that reading that book made me a liberal, that and Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.

From Wikipedia-
The book depicts poverty, the absence of social programs, unpleasant living and working conditions, and the hopelessness prevalent among the working class, which is contrasted with the deeply rooted corruption of people in power. A review by the writer Jack London called it, "the Uncle Tom's Cabin of wage slavery."[2]


We need another generation of muckrakers.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

4. I get a kick out of what you see when they fade to credits after Ma Joad's "we're the people" line:

"They can't wipe us out; they can't lick us. We'll go on forever, Pa, 'cause we're the people."
Then
'Distributed by Twentieth Century Fox'

Rupert Murdoch must have nightmares over that.