What Grapes of Wrath Means to Me...

What is it like to be 14 years old again? More to the point, what was it like to be 14 years old experiencing the Dust Bowl?

That is the question that I had to ask myself when I was cast as the character of Ruthie in NDNU’s production of The Grapes of Wrath.

Let me tell you a little bit about my character. She is 14 years old and the second to youngest in her family (the youngest is her little brother Winfield, who’s 10). It’s a big family and includes mostly males, except for her older sister Rose of Sharon who’s pregnant. Thus, it’s tomboy life for Ruthie, except, since she is reaching the age of puberty, she’s finding that she’s actually pretty proud of her womanish body. Feeling the mothering instinct beginning to crawl into her brain, she’s constantly20taking care of Winfield and rolling her eyes at his young boy ways.
As the play begins, Ruthie’s family is getting ready to go to California and look for work. If anyone is familiar with the story of Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, they know Ruthie’s family is experiencing the results of the Dust Bowl and stock market collapse. They have been forced to move off their farm and now have no home and no work. So it’s off to California, where the fields are green and the work plentiful.

But that’s hardly what they find.

However, you’ll have to come to see the play to experience that.

My question, though, still remained: What is it like to be 14 years old and experiencing the Dust Bowl?

One word: Exciting.

Hardly the word you expected, right?

But it’s true. And I didn’t have far to look for an example either. All I have to look at is how the U.S. is today, with its falling stock market and bleak job outlook for everyone.
That’s not the point, though, because I had to look at it from a different point of view. One that was much younger and more hopeful.

In The Grapes of Wrath, much like today, the younger generation is the one that is hopeful because the failings of the older generation is showing them what they can do to change things. It is offering them a moment to put forth their knowledge and show people what they can do. In the play, Ruthie is hopeful even though her family is experiencing distress. This is because it is her time to change. She will not follow the path her parents took because that no longer works.

Times are changing and she is one of the cogs in that new machine. Ruthie is excited because she knows she will survive.

That is just like today.

Times are changing, but there is a new generation who has a lot to prove and is excited to prove that they can succeed and survive. That concept fits with me as a graduating college student. Here I am, almost done with my education, and I’m entering this bleak job market. I’m excited, though, because I have a lot to prove and I’m ready to prove it. My own personal Dust Bowl is not a time of depression, but a time of new beginnings and I’m going to survive.