Nampa, Idaho - April 20, 2026 - Had I read John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath (1939) in high school, college, or even 20 years ago, I would’ve said, “Thank goodness those wretched days are behind us.” But after finishing this most famous book yesterday, I now understand the French aphorism, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” In the 1930s, drought, economic collapse, and advances in industry and technology displaced well over 2 million Americans, mostly from plains states like Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri. Instead of receiving the help they desperately needed, their innocence, ignorance, and disadvantage became targets of inhumane treatment by cold-hearted profiteers who saw these hungry and homeless people as threats to their livelihoods and opportunities for exploitation.
The story follows the multi-generational Joad family, tenant farmers from Sallisaw, Oklahoma, as they head west on Route 66 in a modified 1926 Hudson sedan toward Bakersfield, California. On the way, they suffer one indignity after another—usually at the hands of deputies hired by powerful landowners to keep the unwanted “Okies” moving west. The exhausted Joads endure unspeakable catastrophes on the way to the promises of work and prosperity, driven by the unyielding will of their matriarch, Ma. Yet, upon their arrival in the soil-rich Central Valley of California, they encounter even worse tragedy and abject poverty.
As I read the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, I couldn’t help but draw parallels between Depression Era America and the post-COVID 2020s, where present-day record-level wealth and income inequality, artificial intelligence, robotic automation, and global warming are driving a substantial percentage of the population from the supposed American Dream to an unsettling hand-to-mouth existence. The Grapes of Wrath shatters the illusion of a just and benevolent society, offering instead a harrowing, raw look at the sickening business mantra of “greed over human need”—a reality best understood by those who have been reduced to mere casualties of the all-important profit margin.
-Chuck Trunks
“This
work was written independently by the author without the use of generative AI.”
Trunks Art moved from Columbia, South Carolina, to Nampa, Idaho, in 2025 and has made this city his home and writing inspiration.
To see more of my work, please have a look at more posts or email me at chucktrunks@gmail.com. Or, visit my website at www.trunksart.com. Also, you can find me on Instagram (chucktrunks) and Facebook (Chuck Trunks).
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