Some days I have subjects that offer themselves up for posting. Some days, it’s easy. Other days, not so much. And then there are days when a fun play on words or a headline pops into my brain absolutely unannounced and unsolicited and I am left with the need to craft a post around it. With that in mind, dear readers, welcome to today’s post.
Of course, the obvious reference is to the great depression era novel written by John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, which is decidedly not cheery and not at all celebratory. It’s been quite some time since I read it (and truth be told, I’m not a huge Steinbeck fan), but if I remember correctly, it was about the struggle between the powerful and the powerless. The Joads, led by Tom Joad, were a poor family driven from their home by drought and the dust bowl and headed to California, the land of sunshine, honey and grapes, at least in the northern part.

Evidently the title has some roots in The Battle Hymm of the Republic by Julia Ward Howe, as in “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored....”
Those lyrics reference a passage in Revelation, an apocalyptic appeal to divine justice and deliverance from oppression, which seems accurate considering the subject matter of the novel. Here’s the passage: “And the angel thrust his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God.” Then there’s more about blood and horses and a thousand and six hundred furlongs, none of which did I like nor understand.
Still, notice the vines and winepress reference. It’s about grapes.
The novel itself uses the phrase at the end of chapter 25 when Steinbeck is writing about the deliberate destruction of food in order for the merchants to keep the price high: “… and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”
It’s all very solemn stuff.
But what of the grapes of rath? I wondered if it could have the same cyclical meaning. And is my wont, I decided to do a bit of research. Rath, it seems, is from Middle English, which is not to be confused with Middle Earth and The Lord of the Rings. Rath in its most archaic meaning is used to describe growing, blooming or ripening early in the year or season. I can see how grapes might be part of that process. This was making me believe that the rath in grapes of really does have to do with grapes and not the metaphor of grapes.
I dug a little deeper.
In Irish history, the word rath was used to describe a circular enclosure surrounded by an earthen wall. A winery perhaps? The description goes on to say that the enclosure was often a dwelling and a stronghold in former times.

The Irish poet William Butler Yeats, a personal favorite of mine, wrote in The Wanderings of Oisin: “Much wondering to see upon all hands, of wattles and woodwork made, Your bell-mounted churches, and guardless the sacred cairn and the rath, And a small and a feeble populace stopping with mattock and space, Or weeding or ploughing with faces a-shining with much-toil wet; While in this place and that place, with bodies unglorious, their chieftains stood.”
Bruce Springsteen released an album in 1995 entitled The Ghost of Tom Joad. The title track as well as most of the album sought to draw comparisons between the dust bowl, which drove people like the Joads west, and modern society. It’s also not very cheery, though Springsteen remains another personal favorite of mine because of his storytelling. In my musically uneducated mind, his storytelling is what makes him the star that he is. That and the late Clarence Clemmons. Alas, that’s best saved for another blog post.
So to recap, the grapes of wrath is a struggle for equality. The grapes of rath could be the fruits grown within the confines of an earthen wall. I can’t help but wonder if the grapes of rath were offered instead of the grapes of wrath if we wouldn’t all be much happier.
Something to think about on this quiet afternoon.