Critical Essay | Critical Essay by David Cassuto

SOURCE: "Turning Wine into Water: Water as Privileged Signifier in The Grapes of Wrath," in Papers on Language and Literature, Vol. 29, No. 1, Winter, 1993, pp. 67-95.

In the following essay, Cassuto examines the symbolic and socioeconomic significance of water as a scarce resource and commodity in The Grapes of Wrath, particularly in relation to the history of agriculture in the American West.

Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free.

—Henry David Thoreau

The Old Testament describes wilderness as "a thirsty ground where there was no water." When the Lord wished to punish, He threatened to "turn the rivers into islands and dry up the pools and … command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it." When granting redemption in Isaiah, God promises instead that "waters shall break forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert" and that "the desert and...
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