The final destination of The Grapes of Wrath is California, land of (dis)illusion. Much like all the would-be starlets who end up waiting tables in Los Angeles and the “actors” who wind up on their knees, the Oklahoma farmers didn’t find the salvation they had longed for.

Nearly 100 years earlier, people were coming for the promise of gold. How many of those travelers ended up poor, with no place left to go?

In Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Sal finds himself picking cotton among the “Okies” outside of Fresno. California may not have been what they had hoped, but over a decade after they had arrived, they still weren’t leaving.

Maybe it’s eternal hope. Maybe it’s sheer resignation. Or, maybe it’s because the place is just so dang gorgeous.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 11th, 2006 at 7:55 pm and is filed under US and Canada. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.