Steinbeck and Contemporary Culture: Capital and Postmodernity

Steinbeck and Contemporary Culture: Capital and Postmodernity

Modernity was an era characterized by an explosion of revolutionary,

productive, creative, critical, and rational human energy. Man was an

end in himself, the remaining absolute in a relativistic universe. The

liberating dialectics of the modern era have come into equilibrium,

however, with the postmodern era in which traditional dichotomies lose

their distinctions and information spreads at exponential rates. The

Grapes of Wrath

Steinbeck foreshadows a contemporary culture defined by dehumanization

in his treatment of capital and the landed class. Steinbeck's most

marked criticism of the psychological and economic consequences of

capitalism is found in the novel's interchapters. In an anonymous and

exemplary exchange between an evicted tenant and a landlord, the

tenant desires to "fight to keep [his] land" and shoot someone, but

the owner maintains that the force responsible for the tenant's

eviction is not human, but "the monster," an impersonal and abstract

entity representing capitalism (45). Steinbeck underscores the

contrast between humanity and the capital interest, as represented by

the monster: "[They] don't breathe air, don't eat side-meat. They

breathe profits; they eat the interest on money. If they don't get it,

they die the way you die without air, without side-meat" (43). The

monster, moreover, "has to have profits all the time….When the monster

stops growing, it dies. It can't stay one size" (44). Capital,

Steinbeck comments, must constantly be in flux and reproduction of

itself. The owners who serve capital are all "caught in something

larger than t...

... middle of paper ...

...more real than real" (81) -

that is, the realization of ideal body image, status, and personality

attributes in the advertised image - the actual social sphere loses

its meaning. Mass production, Baudrillard concludes, is no longer for

the masses, but of the masses (68). This psychological reversal of the

production dynamics that characterized modernity subverts

Whereas capital in The Grapes of Wrath dissociates the bourgeoisie

from their physical humanity, Steinbeck's ideal remains intact. In

Simulacra and Simulation, however, Baudrillard carries the causal

chain to man's inessentiality in postmodern culture.

Works Cited

Baudrillard, Jean. Glaser, Sheila Faria, trans. Simulacra and

Simulation. Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1994.

Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Penguin Books, 1992.