The Grapes of Wrath Critical Essay | Critical Review by Malcolm Cowley

Critical Review by Malcolm Cowley

SOURCE: Cowley, Malcolm. “American Tragedy.” New Republic 98, no. 1274 (3 May 1939): 382-83.

In the following review, Cowley disagrees with the assessment that The Grapes of Wrath is “the greatest novel of the last ten years” but rather finds it to be among the best of the “great angry books” that have the power to spur readers on to protest and action.

While keeping our eyes on the cataclysms in Europe and Asia, we have lost sight of a tragedy nearer home. A hundred thousand rural households have been uprooted from the soil, robbed of their possessions—though by strictly legal methods—and turned out on the highways. Friendless, homeless and therefore voteless, with fewer rights than medieval serfs, they have wandered in search of a few days' work at miserable wages—not in Spain or the Yangtze Valley, but among the vineyards and orchards of California, in a setting too commonplace...
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