Alec Gilmore

As far back as 1988 John H Timmerman contributed an article to the Steinbeck Newsletter on Steinbeck’s use of the Bible in fiction. 

Despite Steinbeck’s mixed feelings about Christianity (‘acceptable for others but not accepted by him’) and despite his agnosticism as to the existence of God (‘For Steinbeck, if there is a God, he is one who watches with detachment the struggle of humankind’), Timmerman has no doubts that Steinbeck was fascinated with the Christian story (as opposed to theology) and that he recognised religion as an undeniable force in the life of his characters. Having absorbed the Bible at his mother’s knee it had an intense fascination for him, his favourite books being Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Isaiah, Matthew, 1 & 2 Corinthians and Revelation.

Timmerman then went on to survey critical studies of Steinbeck’s use of the Bible over three decades. In the first (1955-65) the emphasis fell on biblical symbolism and allusions, mainly in The Grapes of Wrath, some of which were obvious, some very imaginative and some quite unconvincing. In the second (1965-75) interest shifted to East of Eden, To a God Unknown and The Pearl, and, to a lesser extent, to The Raid and In Dubious Battle, the former possibly providing a ‘testing ground’ for techniques which Steinbeck was to use more freely in The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden. In the third (1975-85), on the one hand, partly as a result of Steinbeck’s biographers, interest in the Bible waned and the emphasis shifted to history, but on the other hand it matured as commentators found the influence of the Bible more pervasive and paid more attention to its artistic significance.

So, Timmerman concludes, what began as a highly speculative game of seeking biblical symbols had developed by the late 80s into a more sophisticated analysis of the Bible with more emphasis on Steinbeck’s larger thematic and structural talents, and, assuming that ‘the treatment of biblical influence through allusion and symbolism . . . seems to be fairly complete and possibly exhausted,’ he proceeds to cite three areas for further research: one, the influence of Jung, two, Steinbeck’s religious beliefs, and three, Steinbeck’s moral and ethical views from 1952-68.

But was his assumption right and, even if it was, might there be a fourth way of handling some of the material already available?

A careful reading of some of the relevant literature leaves me with the impression that the main pre-occupation of many of those commentators in the earlier years was to explain, analyse and even ‘find’ biblical allusions. The underlying questions were where do they come from, why are they there, what do they mean? Though some contributions state the obvious and some appear rather contrived, they are all interesting and stimulating to anyone reading either Steinbeck or the Bible seriously. But are they anything else and what were the commentators trying to achieve?

Was it, for example, an attempt to validate Steinbeck as a biblical believer? Probably not, because it is not even clear whether he himself was aware of some of the symbolism attributed to him and, if he were, whether his interpretations were the same as those of his commentators. Was it then an attempt to validate scripture? (‘See! what the Bible says is true, because it’s still happening.’) Hardly, because not everyone was of the opinion that what Steinbeck was describing was anything like what was in the Bible or indeed what was happening, say, in California.

A Professor of English, for example, tried to discourage me from seeing the biblical exodus in The Grapes of Wrath on the grounds that in the case of the latter there was no promised land, the book just petering out with Rose o’Sharon offering her breast to a dying man, nor any trace of ‘the slavery in Egypt’ because there were plenty of jobs for those who were prepared to do them. Since his origins were Californian I was in no position to question his Steinbeck credentials but his obvious lack of understanding of the biblical exodus certainly left me with some doubts as to his competence in that department.

Does it matter if the events are not exactly as described? If what you (the reader) are after is historical accuracy, yes. If what you are after is building theories, principles, lessons and dogmas on the historical accuracy of those events, yes. But supposing you are after something different? Supposing you want, not so much to know what happened, nor even to understand it, but to enter into, feel and appreciate the emotions and responses of the players in the drama.  

In that case, provided your experience chimes in with that of the characters in the story, it doesn’t matter whether the details are exactly the same, or whether they happened exactly as described, and perhaps not even whether they happened at all. What the symbolism does is to provide a bridge between the world Steinbeck was living in and the biblical world. In so doing he achieves three objectives: one, he enriches his own text because he enables us ‘to see’ at different levels; two, he helps us to appreciate the biblical narratives in a new way; and three, if our experience is similar, the bringing of the two together may provide a richer understanding of ourselves and our own situation than either piece of writing could do independently. It is this resource which I find so helpful in Steinbeck and which I fear believers in general and preachers in particular may have been slow to explore and exploit.

In other words, if Steinbeck enthusiasts have been quick to plumb the depths of his writings by digging into the Bible, perhaps Bible readers could plumb the depths of the Bible by digging into Steinbeck. Perhaps the mine is not exhausted. Perhaps it is a new seam. Perhaps here there is a whole seam we have scarcely begun to tap, and which, were it to develop, could open up Steinbeck to a whole new range of readers.

Since the subject by its very nature is inexhaustible, all we can do is to test the water by taking one or two examples which are not exactly religion, nor always biblical, and which may not be immediately obvious to the faithful but which have about them a rumour of God — possibly the God Steinbeck was searching after, or had already found; possibly one we could all benefit from.

East of Eden

East of Eden is a personal story about human beings and a personal God whose concern is not what we do but what we are.

It pivots on two biblical allusions: the offerings brought by Cain and Abel (Genesis 4: 1-7) and the interpretation of that difficult Hebrew word, timshol, (v 7). The first relates to the presence of evil in the world and the second to what we can do about it. No-one can calculate the amount of ink spilled by biblical commentators in their attempts to explain either the texts or the underlying problem, but none can claim much success. Many believers have given up the quest. Many unbelievers question whether it is a quest worth pursuing.

Put differently, the underlying issues are universal and of very general and widespread concern. The first issue is explored in relation to sibling rivalry and parental favouritism. Everybody who has been brought up in a family knows what that means, but favouritism strikes in many other kinds of ways. Who has not, at some time or other, fallen a victim to it ? So in the light of that experience, what are we to make of a God who accepts one person and rejects another? Why this man? Why that woman? Why Cain, but not Abel? Why a keeper of sheep but not a tiller of the ground? Why an animal but not a plant?

Working with human experience rather than dogma, Steinbeck explores the emotions and the heartache as he searches for explanations through three sets of relationships. In the first case, on their father’s birthday, Adam gives him an animal — a mongrel pup picked up in the forest which had cost him nothing. Charles gives him a penknife, a mechanical instrument for harvesting — it had three blades and a corkscrew, was pearl-handled, and had taken weeks of savings. His father loved the pup. He never used the knife. You wouldn’t believe it could ever happen, except that you have seen it so many times and may even have been party to it. But who wants a father, let alone a God, like that? 

In the second generation, history repeats itself with varying twists. Adam’s sons reflect two kinds of character, one content to be part of the world where he is, the other always needing to change it and move on, out of which there develops a sub-text, which is not very ‘sub’. Cain’s story of rejection so obviously becomes our story. We are all Children of Cain. Abel never had any. We are all human beings caught in a network of relationships: good and evil, right and wrong, love and hate, alienation and rejection, brother against brother, father against son.

When we come to the third generation, Adam and Caleb (father and son), the question changes. Adam loses a fortune in a  disastrous business venture. Caleb, in a genuine attempt to soften the blow, offers the fruit of a windfall and Adam rejects it on the grounds that it is tainted money, adding,

‘I would have been happy if you could have given me — well, what your brother has . . . give me a good life. That would be something I could value.’

Of course the question we started with (Why this, but not that?) has not been answered, but now it no longer appears to be the relevant question. Steinbeck’s God is not one who picks and chooses, liking this but not that. Rather he seems to say, ‘I don’t want any of your gifts — I want you’, and in that respect he is not far from the prophets, when pleading for a quality of life, or indeed from Romans 12: 1. In three generations we have covered 2000 years of biblical history.

Steinbeck has moved us on. He has openly demonstrated the unfairness of the world we live in (and perhaps helped us to come to terms with it), the error of trying to attribute it to God (or perhaps even trying to find reasons for it at all) and the need to re-read the prophets whose God is of a different kind. And in providing us with a different set of questions to handle those tricky and often difficult situations of human relationships he may be suggesting that in the last resort what we are is more important than what we do.

The Grapes of Wrath

The Grapes of Wrath is a story about social conditions which introduces us to a God of the wilderness so that we can distinguish between where he was and where he is.

Despite differences of detail the allusions to the exodus from Egypt and the ‘march’ to the Promised Land (Exodus 3) have not been lost on Steinbeck commentators. The harsh Pharaoh in the shape of wealthy landowners and hard-headed banks, people driven first into slavery and then choosing escape albeit it into the wilderness, days and nights on the road so similar to the forty years of wandering in the wilderness, and all in search of a promised land which never quite comes off, or at least not in the way they expected when they set out, are all familiar themes.

For many of us this may not appear at first sight to be the stuff of our everyday lives. (‘How fortunate we are not to have to face that!’ we might say). But for many others in the world life is exactly like that and, once we get away from the literal, even for the rest of us ‘the wilderness experience’ may not be all that remote.

A little imagination may help us not only to identify it but also to recognise it where previously we had not even noticed it. What is this ‘wilderness experience’? Brueggemann lists some characteristics. It is formless and lifeless, hostile and destructive, and often populated by people who are recalcitrant and bitter. Nothing can grow there. It is the land of the enemy — cosmic, natural, historical — no props, no resources, no order or meaning. Seedless and barren, it is a place without promise, hope or renewal. It is not a case of prosperity marred by sudden or temporary landlessness, like a bad day or a bad week; it is a case of utter barrenness even if punctuated by occasional prosperity. And it is not something you easily forget even when it is over.

Nor need it be communal. Often it is personal. The barren women of Genesis, and every generation since, know it. So do prisoners in solitary, hostages, refugees and asylum seekers, as well as the unemployed, the redundant or the young retired. Like most diseases it can strike anywhere. Casy, the preacher, is a good example. He used to know who he was and where he was going, but now he has lost his way. He used to preach a good sermon, but now he has nothing to say. He used to feel he had something to offer to others, but now he feels just as lost as everybody else. And what makes it worse for him is that previously he knew so clearly where he was — and where God was too!

Against this background Brueggemann takes us to Exodus 16 for enlightenment. How did we ever get into this mess? What can we do about it? First we hear the murmurings, then the protest, then the rank dissatisfaction, followed by the longing for what used to be, despite the slavery (v 3). At least they used to have food and drink, which was preferable to hunger and death. True, they had made the choice to make the journey, but it was never a real choice and they cannot believe it was their destiny to live between oases.

And where is God? Well, he is there first in the very protestations, as he is with any protest movement which has justice on its side. But he also offers some sort of answer (vv 4, 8, 12). Can they not begin to see that even in the wilderness it is possible to get what they thought they could only get in Egypt? That landlessness can provide what they thought only land could give? God is present with them but he is hidden; they only see him afterwards (v 6). He hides himself in the cloud (vv 10-12). They are too busy looking for the wrong ‘thing’ in the wrong place.

This is not the traditional God, identifiable in the cult, doing the traditional things and appearing in conventional ways. This God is recognised in his capacity to transform situations, to turn emptiness into satiation, death into life, and hunger into bread and meat.

What’s more, with him there is a bonus. All they got in Egypt was Managed Bread. What they are getting now is Wilderness Bread. Wilderness Bread is better. Managed Bread means that some will always have too much and others too little. Wilderness Bread is ‘enough for all’, bread that refuses to be administered and is destructive of inequalities, only it turns sour if you try to grab it.

This picture of God and this interpretation of Exodus 16 is independent of time, place and circumstance. It relates both to communities and to individuals but is only accessible to those who are those who are prepared to admit to, and live with, their vulnerability by daring to abandon the old and find him in the new.

It is not a million miles away from Steinbeck’s ‘God’ in The Grapes of Wrath. In both cases, those who confine their search to the familiar, the traditional and the expected are bound to feel he is not there, but those who can see him in Exodus 16 may also see him more clearly in Steinbeck, and once they have found him in Steinbeck they may finish up with a greater appreciation of Exodus 16.

Cannery Row and Tortilla Flat

Cannery Row and Tortilla Flat introduce us to a variety of characters, friends of Steinbeck, and to a God who affirms life as we try to distinguish between what is and what ought to be.

Cannery Row is a real place. Steinbeck describes it as ‘a poem, a stink . . . a dream . . .  restaurants and whore houses’. Its inhabitants have been described as ‘whores, pimps, gamblers and sons of bitches’. Steinbeck says that meant ‘everybody’, adding that had the writer looked through another peephole he might have said, ‘Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men’, and he would have meant the same thing.

Tortilla Flat is more difficult to locate. Many locals still deny that it ever existed, but Sue Gregory, who wrote two poems about the paisanos  living in shanties on a ‘flat’ up above Monterey, introduced Steinbeck to them. Sue found their dignity and a humour an inspiration. Steinbeck found them a bit like the people in Cannery Row.

Both groups no doubt reminded him of some of the Mexicans, Chinese and other unskilled immigrants he had rubbed shoulders with on a summer job to earn college fees, or of the poor and transient field-workers of California about whom he had read in the newspapers. Illiterate, colourful, moronic and mutually retarded some of them may be, but in a world dominated by Sunday Schools and a shallow respectability, Steinbeck felt they struck a blow for honesty and concern for their neighbour. He was fascinated by them. He could deny neither an affinity with them nor an admiration for their recklessness, and as one reads the stories in Cannery Row and Tortilla Flat it is hard to resist the conclusion that they were the sort of people whose company he both valued and enjoyed.

At the same time there was no hiding the fact that there was something about them he found repulsive. So often they seemed to be more ‘animal’ than human. Food, drink, shelter, sex and status seemed to be all that mattered and rarely did anything in their lives survive for more than one night. ‘Tortilla and Beans’ in Tortilla Flat and the Frog Hunt in Cannery Row are good examples. Good causes and excellent intentions, bright ideas, incredible ingenuity and unlimited effort, but always mingled with an impulsiveness and lack of thought, mixed motives, and an overdose of self-interest.

These people may not immediately call biblical imagery to mind but Franziska Bark’s comments on Numbers 33: 1, 16-23 (in a hitherto unpublished paper) may help us to the God whom Steinbeck is groping after. Of the slaves coming out of Egypt she says that ‘they removed . . . pitched . . . journeyed . . . pitched. . . . went. . . pitched. . . removed. . . (and) encamped. . .’ but in the Torah they never arrive. Deuteronomy stops on the threshold. Fulfilment must wait till Joshua.

The promise of Canaan (Exodus 6) may be what gets them going and what defines both the goal and the direction. The significance of the wandering cannot be seen without it, but the arrival is not the sole aim and purpose. Even to see the wandering as a means to an end would be misleading, for what we are seeing here is one of the fundamental differences between the Torah and the Christian tradition. What matters to Christians, implicit in the Christian Bible, is goal, climax, telos or arrival. What matters to the wandering Israelites is ‘a future becoming’ by the continued ‘walking in the ways of God.’

Many of Steinbeck’s characters, particularly in Cannery Row and Tortilla Flat may be nearer the Hebrew than the Christian tradition. Invariably motivated by some plan, dream or objective, they rarely arrive. When they do it is only, and always, after considerable wandering and the telos is only ever part of the story.

This is not so much a God who gets you to places as one who affirms life on the way, even if it is on the way to nowhere. He is the God of the Fathers, who promised, ‘I will be with you’ (Exodus 3: 12) and his very name signifies the closeness of his relationship to his people in their struggle. It is also not very far from the concept of ‘Is’ Thinking and ‘Living Into’ in Sea of Cortez (chapter 15) reflecting the tension in Steinbeck when he distinguishes teleological thinking, which starts from what ‘should be’ in terms of an end pattern whilst often ignoring the fact that in reality things are often very different, and non-teleological thinking, which begins with things as they are.

For this insight Steinbeck was no doubt indebted to Ricketts. Ricketts well understood the difference between what is and what ought to be; the tension in the poor people who wanted to escape from their lot but whose mindset prevented them from doing so —    ‘ . . . the thin red line between his own animal and human nature.’ Steinbeck grew into it through him. His favourite characters, perhaps even Steinbeck himself, were slaves seeking freedom. But Ricketts is always there too — in Cannery Row  (as Doc) and in In Dubious Battle (as Burton). Ricketts is the shepherd. Steinbeck and the boys are his flock. In Cannery Row Ricketts is almost a local deity; not powerful, but wiser and more Christlike than those around him, and it is he who enables Steinbeck to see the value of those who can feel no value in themselves.

Taken together, all these people are an affirmation of life and its source, engaged in a series of transformations and redemptions, with ‘Doc’ at the centre — unjudgemental, accepting, understanding of human frailty, and fatalistic in response to pain — and everyone knows it.

The road of ‘the wanderer’, however, never runs smooth nor does it go in the same direction all the time and something of Steinbeck’s ambivalence may be reflected in his responses to the ending of The Grapes of Wrath. On the one hand, when asked by critics what was to happen to the Joads he replied that whereas to begin with they saw themselves as ‘different’ (from everybody else) by the end they had come to see themselves as ‘part of a greater whole’. To that extent they had experienced reform. The ending is the completion of their education and the rest of the society now needs to have the same experience and transformation.

On the other hand, when his publisher had wanted to change the end by introducing the dying man a little earlier so that he would at least have some acquaintance with the family before Rose o’Sharon suddenly offers him her breast he had reacted violently and with determination.

This is not a story about love, he argued; it is about survival. The overall ending is that life goes on. What Rose o’Sharon did should be no more than offering bread to a beggar and the absence of previous contact is important. It is not intended to be a satisfying story. I tried to write the book the way lives are being lived, not the way books are being written. His protest and firmness are a clear demonstration of his theology, perhaps also a demonstration of the way in which he was moving — more concerned with what ‘is’ than with what ‘ought to be’.

To a God Unknown

To a God Unknown leads us through personal human experience to a God for whom death is the gateway to life and so enables us to appreciate the difference between what we are and what we may be.

If The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden intertwine the overt with the underlying, To a God Unknown is more direct, though not necessarily more transparent. By changing the word order, Steinbeck insists that this is not ‘the unknown God’ at Athens (Acts 17: 23). This is ‘a god who was unexplored’ rather than one simply ‘not recognised’. 

Joseph Wayne leaves home at the age of 35 because there is insufficient to support the family. When he arrives in his new land, ‘the endless green halls and aisles and alcoves seemed to have meanings as obscure and promising as the symbols of an ancient religion.’ His sense of awe and the numinous reflect parts of Genesis, such as ‘the oaks of Mamre and Moreh’ (12: 1 and 18: 1, ‘this stone’ (28: 22) and  en-mishpat (14: 7) which suggests a spring, and much of what one finds in the Vedic hymn could be paralleled in the Psalms.

From here it is but a short step to Otto’s mysterium tremendum. Joseph bends down, pats the earth with his hand and develops a new respect for nature. He senses his father in a tree. He forms a friendship with a local Indian, Juanito, and tells him he feels the land is full of ghosts and that ‘what lives here is more real than we are’. Juanito explains to him how the dead never go away — the earth is our mother, and everything that lives has life from its mother and goes back to its mother. In the centre of an open glade is a rock as big as a house — something like an altar. ‘There’s something here,’ says Joseph, ‘. . . I know it . . . This is holy — and this is old. This is ancient — and holy.’ Here is another world — almost another deity.

Matters come to a head when he takes his bride home on their wedding night. All goes well until they reach the pass, where the mountain was split and the road blasted out of the hillside. Suddenly Elizabeth is stricken with fear and can’t go on. Her heart keeps missing a beat. The atmosphere is electric. Even the horses sense it.

There is no easy or rational explanation but Joseph suggests that perhaps it has something to do with the wedding night, and that what she is feeling (and fearing) is going ‘through the pass’ to a new life.

‘Yesterday we were married and it was no marriage,’ he says. ‘This is our marriage — through the pass — entering the passage like sperm and egg that have become a single unit of pregnancy. This is a symbol of the undistorted real (italics mine) . . . I want to go through the pass.’

‘I’m afraid, Joseph’, Elizabeth replies. ‘I don’t know why, but I’m terribly afraid . . . I’ll go . . . I’ll have to go, but I’ll be leaving myself behind. I’ll think of myself standing here looking through at the new one who will be on the other side.

Lisca has drawn attention to the similarities of the story to that of the biblical Joseph (Genesis 37-50) in that there are several brothers, Benjamin being the youngest, Joseph receiving the seal of approval without being the eldest, a hint of quarrelling before Joseph leaves home, and all set in a region with a reputation for a drought every 35 years, all of which merits further exploration, but the experience of Isaac and Jacob might also have something to offer.

Jacob also receives the seal of approval without being the firstborn and Isaac accepts Jacob’s necessary if untimely departure much as Joseph Wayne’s father accepted his (Genesis 27: 1-29), but in the light of the incident quoted above two pivots in the Genesis story are worth closer attention: first, the ladder up to heaven (28: 10-22), and second, the wrestling with the angel (32: 22-32).

Both stories have a touch of the awe and the numinous and both chime in with many of our emotions in similar circumstances. We all know what it is to leave one world for another, whether it be home for school, childhood for adolescence, school for work, one job for another job, marriage, retirement or bereavement. Each in its own way is a quest for the God of the undistorted real. Both also point forward to Paul’s need to die to the old in order to enter into the new (Romans 7: 9, Galatians 2: 19). For all these reasons both may have something to say to us about our personal development and, thanks to Steinbeck, may all bring us closer to God than the ‘unknown God’ or the idols of Athens.

Steinbeck, like Paul, seems to understand only too well how each new birth has to be preceded by a death, whilst reinforcing the notion that with God each death is never an end but a beginning, even if it never feels like that at the time. He knows how, like Jacob and Elizabeth, we cling to the familiar and the secure and fear the unknown. And that ladder is a re-assurance that the God who was there in the old is the same as the one he will encounter in the new; there is no need to fear.

But then when Jacob has gone out and conquered the new he faces similar but different fears on his return. He is a changed man now. How will he be received by those who have known no change? All night he wrestles with the problem, refusing to surrender until dawn gives him the assurance that he can only return if he carries the sign (the limp) that the one who is coming back is different from the one who set out.

And so one wonders whether Elizabeth, having left ‘her self’ behind, ever did think of herself standing there ‘looking through at the new one . . . on the other side’. And did Paul, in the years of imprisonment towards the end of his life, ever go back in his imagination to stand in the place of that man who stumbled on the Damascus Road and look again ‘at the new one . . . on the other side’. And if he did, what would he feel? A lucky escape? A terrible mistake, after which life was never the same again? Or a glorious gateway to an unknown future?

What would we feel? Because by helping us to appreciate his God Steinbeck may be helping us also to find ours.   

Sources

Bark, Franzisca, ‘Time and the Torah’. in Judaism vol 49, no 3 (issue 195, summer 2000) pp 259-68.

Benson, Jackson J, ‘John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row: A Re-consideration’, in Western American Literature, vol xii, no 1, 1977, pp 11-40.

Brueggemann, Walter, The Land, Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1977, mainly chapter 3.

Kiernan, Thomas, The Intricate Music, Little, Brown & Co, Boston and Toronto, 1979.

Lisca, Peter, John Steinbeck. Nature and Myth, Thomas Y Crowell Co, New York, 1978.

Lisca, Peter, ‘The Dynamics of Community in The Grapes of Wrath’, in From Irving to Steinbeck: Studies of American Literature in Honor of Harry R Warfel, Gainsville, University of Florida, 1972.

Marks, Lester Jay, Thematic Design in the Novels of John Steinbeck, chapter 3, The Mouton Co, The Hague, Netherlands, 1969, and reprinted as ‘East of Eden: “Thou Mayest”’, in Steinbeck Quarterly, vol iv, no 1 (Winter 1971), pp 3-18.

Otto, Rudolf, The Idea of the Holy, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1926.

Slade, Leonard A, ‘The Use of Biblical Allusions in The Grapes of Wrath’, in College Language Association Journal, Atlanta 1968, 11, 241-247.

Steinbeck, Elaine and Wallsten, Robert (eds), John Steinbeck. A Life in Letters, pp 67-69, Minerva edition, 1994.

Timmerman, John H, ‘John Steinbeck’s Use of the Bible’, in Steinbeck Quarterly, vol xxi, nos 1-2 (Winter/Spring 1988), pp 24-39