Jungles

            I wish we had done more with Woodie Guthrie and especially Bound For Glory.  There’s a scene in Guthrie’s story that strongly correlates to the arrival of the Joads at their very first Hooverville (241). The look of both camps are strikingly similar: rusted, metal tin roofs and houses, scrapped together with paper stuffed in holes, open fires, boxes for chairs, thatch. However, what I found most interesting was that the camp the Joads arrive at lacked the nice communal feel that pops up everywhere in “The Jungles” (Guthrie’s nickname for the Hooverville) of Bound For Glory. The men in the Joad’s camp have been pushed around for too long, have been burnt by peach farms and other callous companies, and have lost or just conveniently forgotten how to be pleasant and function as a solid community. When Pa first speaks to the Mayor, asking if the family can camp, the Mayor responds in half nonsense and half sarcasm and then goes back to his business. The lack of community continues with the young man, who, though willing to talk, is neither kind nor invested in anything but his own woes.

            This is a far cry from the Hoovervilles in Bound For Glory. People seem to be more thoroughly invested in one another than what Steinback expressed. The sense of strong connection and community exuded in Guthrie’s definition of the Jungles actually reminds me of the diner scene in Grapes of Wrath when the waitress’ kindness with the candy leads to her getting a fat tip from the truck driver. When Guthrie arrives, he notices the dirt and the muck and the bugs—everything dismal about his situation. But the people are all rooting for one another. There is a woman feeding anyone who needs feeding from a large stew pot. There is a community shack set up where the men relax, smoke, and gamble.  Guthrie sums it up pretty well, “If you’d go looking for social problems, you’d find just a good friendly bunch of people getting a lot of laughing and talking done, and some of it pretty good sense” (249).  It’s interesting that Guthrie would devote an entire chapter to the kindness in his camp and Steinback would choose to portray the same sort of kindness in the diner scene. Those who still have their jobs have the capacity for compassion, but those who have been downtrodden for too long just seem a little…detached.