ESPANSIONI DI TESTO

MODULE C - California Dream (p. 151)

TASK
Read the passage below and make notes about
- who the Okies were
- what they were looking for
- what they found instead
- how resident people reacted to them
- how the migrants' feelings changed.

[…] And then the dispossessed(1) were drawn west - from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas families, tribes, dusted out(2), tractored out(3). Carloads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousands and fifty thousands and a hundred thousands and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless - restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do - to lift, to push, to pull, to pick, to cut - anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got(4) no place to live. Like ants scurrying for work, for food, and most of all for land.
We ain't(5) foreign. Seven generations back Americans, and beyond that Irish, Scotch, English, German. One of our folks in the Revolution, an'(6) they was(7) lots of our folks in the Civil War - both sides. Americans.
They were hungry and they were fierce. And they had hoped to find a home, and they found only hatred. Okies - the owners hated them because the owners knew they were soft and the Okies were strong, that they were fed and the Okies hungry; and perhaps the owners had heard from their grandfathers how easy it is to steal land from a soft man if you are fierce and hungry and armed. The owners hated them. And in the towns, the storekeepers hated them because they had no money to spend. There is no shorter path to a storekeeper's contempt, and all his admirations are exactly opposite. The town men, little bankers, hated Okies because there was nothing to gain from them. They had nothing. And the laboring people hated Okies because a hungry man must work, and if he must work, if he has to work, the wage payer automatically gives him less for his work; and then no one can get more.
And the dispossessed, the migrants, flowed into California, two hundred and fifty thousand, and three hundred thousand. Behind them new tractors were going on the land and the tenants were being forced off. And new waves were on the way, new waves of the dispossessed and the homeless, hardened, intent, and dangerous. […]
The great highways streamed with moving people. […] They were migrants. And the hostility changed them, welded them, united them - hostility that made the little towns group and arm as though to repel an invader, squads with pick handles, clerks and storekeepers with shotguns, guarding the world against their own people.
In the West there was panic when the migrants multiplied on the highways. Men of property were terrified for their property. Men who had never been hungry saw the eyes of the hungry. Men who had never wanted anything very much saw the flare of want in the eyes of the migrants. And the men of the towns and of the soft suburban country gathered to defend themselves; and they reassured themselves that they were good and the invaders bad, as a man must do before he fights. They said, These goddamned(8) Okies are dirty and ignorant. They are degenerate, sexual maniacs. These godddamned Okies are thieves. They'll steal anything. They've got no sense of property rights.
And the latter was true, for how can a man without property know the ache of ownership? And the defending people said, They bring disease, they're filthy. We can't have them in the schools. They're strangers. How'd you like to have your sister go out with one of 'em?(9) […]
And the migrants streamed in on the highways and their hunger was in their eyes, and their need was in their eyes. […] And the anger began to ferment.

(From John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, chapters 19 and 21, Viking Press, New York, 1967.)

The Grapes of Wrath is a novel about the forced migration of 'Okies' to California during the depression of the 1930s. It was written by John Steinbeck in 1939 and is one of the most famous novels of our time.

1) dispossessed : tenants and small farmers dispossessed of their land and farms
2) dusted out : forced out of their land by the drought that produced the Dust Bowl
3) tractored out : forced off by the tractors that replaced manual land labor
4) we got : we have got
5) we ain't : we aren't
6) an' : and
7) hey was : there were
8) goddammed : damned by God
9) 'em : them