John Steinbeck, 1939 (Penguin 2014)
Homenagem à avassaladora vontade de viver e defender a família o melhor que se pode. Família que pode ser todo um povo, todo um grupo frágil. A fome e desespero por trabalho. O instinto maternal, o amor, respeito e obsessão pela terra que nos sustenta, a sobreporem-se aos medo da agressividade sobre os fracos. A inveja e falta de empatia de um passado que é presente.
94
All of them were caught in something larger than themselves. Some of them hated
the mathematics that drove them, and some were afraid, and some worshiped the
mathematics because it provided a refuge from thought and from feeling.
95
A man can hold land if he can just eat and pay taxes; he can do that (...) But
- you see, a bank or a company can't do that, because those creatures 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.
96
Maybe the next year will be a good year. God knows much cotton there will be
next year. And with all the wars. God knows what price cotton will bring. Don't
they make explosives out of cotton? And uniforms? Get enough wars and cotton
will hit ceiling. Next year, maybe.
Her full face was not soft; it was controlled, kindly. Her
hazel eyes seemed to have experienced all possible tragedy and to have mounted
pain and suffering like steps into a high calm and a superhuman understanding.
She seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the
family, the strong place that could not be taken. But better than joy was
calm. Imperturbability could be depended upon. And from her great and humble position
in the family she had taken dignity and a clean calm beauty. From her position
as healer, her hands had grown sure and cool and quiet; from her position as
arbiter she had become as remote and faultless in judgment as a goddess.
192 For nitrates are not the land, nor phosphates; and the
length of fiber in the cotton is not the land. Carbon is not a man, nor salt,
nor water nor calcium. He is all these, but he is much more, much more; and the
land is so much more than its analysis. (...) That man who is more than his
elements knows the land that is more than its analysis. But the machine man,
driving a dead tractor on land he does not know and love, understands only
chemistry; and he is contemptuous of the land and of himself. When the
corrugated iron doors are shut, he goes home, and his home is no the land.
215 Listen
to the motor. Listen to the wheels. Listen with your ears and with your hands
on the steering wheel; listen with the palm of your hand on the gear-shift
lever; listen with your feet on the floor boards. Listen to the pounding old
jalopy with all your senses, for a change of tone, a variation of rhythm may
mean—a week here? That rattle—that’s tappets. Don’t hurt a bit. Tappets can
rattle till Jesus comes again without no harm. But that thudding as the car
moves along—can’t hear that—just kind of feel it. Maybe oil isn’t gettin’
someplace. Maybe a bearin’s startin’ to go. Jesus, if it’s a bearing, what’ll we do?
Money’s goin’ fast.
258 The
last clear definite function of man—muscles aching to work, minds aching to
create beyond the single need—this is man. To build a wall, to build a house, a
dam, and in the wall and house and dam to put something of Manself, and to
Manself take back something of the wall, the house the dam; to take hard
muscles from the lifting, to take the clear lines and form from conceiving. For
man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond
his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his
accomplishments.
268 The turntable drops down and the record swings
into its place in the pile. The purple light goes off. The nickel,
which has caused all this mechanism to work, has caused Crosby to sing and an orchestra to play, this
nickel drops from between the contact points into the box where the profits go.
This nickel, unlike most money, has actually done a job of work, has been
physically responsible for a reaction.
319 At first the
families were timid in the building and tumbling worlds, but gradually the
technique of building worlds became their technique. Then leaders emerged, then
laws were made, then codes came into being. And as the worlds moved westward
they were more complete and better furnished, for their builders were more
experienced in building them.
336 If he needs a million acres to make him feel rich,
seems to me he needs it 'cause he feels awful poor inside hisself, and if he's
poor in hisself, there ain't no million acres gonna make him feel rich, an'
maybe he's disappointed that nothin' he can do 'll make him feel rich – not rich
like Mis Wilson was when she give her tent when Granpa died.
355 It don't take no nerve to do somepin when there ain't nothin 'else you can do.
370 The Mexicans were weak and fled. They could not resist,
because they wanted nothing in the world as frantically as the Americans wanted
land.
Then, with time, the squatters were no longer squatters, but
owners; and their children grew up and had children on the land. And the
hunger was gone from them, the feral hunger, the gnawing, tearing hunger for
land, for water and earth and the good sky over it, for the green thrusting
grass, for the swelling roots. They had these things so completely that
they did not know about them any more. They had no more the stomach-tearing
lust for a rich acre and a shining blade to plow it, for seed and a windmill
beating its wings in the air. They arose in the dark no more to hear the
sleepy birds’ first chittering, and the morning wind around the house while
they waited for the first light to go out to the dear acres. These things
were lost, and crops were reckoned in dollars, and land was valued by principal
plus interest, and crops were bought and sold before they were planted.
373 And the laboring people hated Okies because a hungry man must
work, and if he must work, if he has to work, the wage payer automatically
gives him less for his work; and then no one can get more.
And the dispossess, the migrants, flowed into California, two
hundred and fifty thousand, and three hundred thousand. Behind them new
tractors were going on the land and the tenants were being forced off.
And new waves were on the way, new waves of the dispossessed and the homeless,
hardened, intent, and dangerous.
And while the Californians wanted many things, accumulation,
social success, amusement, luxury, and a curious banking security, the new
barbarians wanted only two things--land and food; and to them the two were one.
443 The great companies did not know that the line between hunger
and anger is a thin line. And money that might have gone to wages went for gas,
for guns, for agents and spies, for blacklists, for drilling. On the highways
the people moved like ants and searched for work, for food. And the anger began
to ferment.
501 The story tellers, gathering attention into their
tales, spoke in great rhythms, spoke in great words because the tales were
great, and the listeners became great through them.
David Gelb, 2011
