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The Grapes of Wrath, a la Shmoop. Some things never go out of style.

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Little black dresses. Fluffy carpets. Spray cheese in a can.

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Occasionally, even history repeats itself.

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In Steinbeck’s 1939 novel, The Grapes of Wrath, which was actually set in the 1920’s…

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America is in the middle of an epic economic depression.

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And we’re not talking an… eat some ice cream on the couch and sing along to Taylor

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Swift… depression.

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More like the kind that gets its own chapter in textbooks.

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So if the Grapes of Wrath is… not-so-ancient-history, why do some of the book’s quotations sound

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like they were cribbed from the evening news in 2008?

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Either Steinbeck had a crystal ball, or Americans are still dealing with the same money problems

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we had 90 years ago. Steinbeck’s Dust Bowl isn’t winning any

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awards for Best Place to Make a Living.

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Tenant farmers are fighting eviction by penny-pinching landowners, and they can’t even wreak vengeance

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with a flaming bag of dog poop…

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…because the landowners blame it all on a faceless bank.

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As one corporate minion said… The Shawnee Land and Cattle Company ain’t nobody. It’s

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a company. So much for customer service.

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After the housing market crashed in 2008, homeowners had the same problem fighting their

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foreclosures.

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It’s kind of hard to argue your case to a complaint form on the internet. At least

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1-800 numbers play you some tunes. Steinbeck’s characters feel helpless to

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stop the forces pushing them off their land.

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The same company underling as before explained:

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The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they

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can't control it.

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Well, that’s comforting.

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When Citibank fell through a hole of its own making in 2008…

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…the government had to haul it out, and it seemed like the whole country would be

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dragged down with it.

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Innocent bystanders couldn’t really do much about it one way or the other; most of us

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were as helpless as the Joads.

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Although, on a happier note, the 21st century was better equipped to deal with large amounts

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of dust.

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Okay, so perhaps the Joads weren’t dealing with quite the level of greed that we see

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today…

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…but they still had to battle for their own survival and success against the powers

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that be, and those powers had an agenda of their own.

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Here’s another quote ripped directly from a news anchor’s teleprompter:

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The bank - the monster has to have profits all the time. It can't wait. It'll die. … When

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the monster stops growing, it dies. It can't stay one size.

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Now this is starting to sound more like Cookie Monster.

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Except instead of cookies, the banks wanted low-carb greenbacks.

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It’s creepy how similar the crash is to Steinbeck’s novel…

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…old-timey investors buy lots of land to rent out for farming, and get a nasty surprise

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when all of the lovely dirt blows away. Cue the crash.

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So what do you think?

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Is Steinbeck’s novel stuck in a 2008 time warp?

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Are his faceless monsters still around today in the form of money-grubbing corporations?

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Are humans still creating their own worst enemies?

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Shmoop amongst yourselves.

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