CRY THE BELOVED COUNTRY AND THE GRAPES OF WRATH: THE CULTURAL UNIVERSALITY OF TRAGEDY FOLLOWING IMPROVISATION IN A SCENE OF (ECONOMIC) CONSTRAINT

On the surface level the two stories seem like chalk and cheese, not worth comparing; what could one Zulu man’s quest for his son in Johannesburg and one American family’s quest for survival in California have in common? However, if one looks closely, one will identify certain common themes which shouldn’t go unnoticed, especially if one sees the two novels in light of Paton’s remark: “I read for the first time John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath and would soon adopt his style of rendering conversations, indicating by a preliminary dash that a speech was about to begin, and omitting all inverted commas. The novel made a deep impression on me…” (Towards the Mountain, Part I of his two-part autobiography, 1980). Through a comparison of the thematic and technical similarities in the two works, I hope to prove that there are no cultural boundaries, no cultural specifics, to what follows from people’s reactions to their dire economic circumstances. Indeed, tragedy and death/ suffering are the only inevitabilities of improvisation in a scene of (economic) constraint.