“I never saw such people”

In this essay, I argue that John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath has taken on renewed significance in the midst of the current economic downturn known in the United States as “the Great Recession.” While in the 1930s Steinbeck’s novel offered a way of understanding and responding to the economic conditions of the Depression, today the novel foregrounds the degree to which postmodernism has foreclosed the utopian possibilities of the novel’s grand narrative. I contend that the novel’s methodology can provide a flawed but potent framework for an effective literary response to the current economic crisis.