It Was Wrathful Grapes the Whole Time

Manchester, N.H. — For years, political theorists, cable news book-club hosts, and that one guy at the end of the bar have sparred over whether America resembles George Orwell’s 1984 or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. But a growing number of cultural critics say we’ve been thumbing the wrong paperbacks. We’re not living in Orwell or Huxley’s nightmares—we’ve been stuck in Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath all along.

“Look, we’ve got telescreens, sure. We’ve got our soma knockoffs—antidepressants, TikTok, flavored vapes—no one’s denying that,” said Tad Crater, a Northeastern University professor and part-time prophet of doom. “But the bones of our society? Families uprooted, corporate landlords squeezing people dry, a promised land that turns out to be just another labor camp. That’s Steinbeck, chapter and verse.”

In The Grapes of Wrath, Dust Bowl migrants headed west for a better life only to meet barbed wire, discrimination, and bosses who thought a living wage was a dangerous precedent. Ninety years later, the scenery has shifted from cotton fields to Amazon warehouses, but the script is nearly identical.

“Which one has the good parts about keeping folks in line?” Said Vice President J.D. Vance, when asked which dystopia he believes we’re living in. “I didn’t finish the books or start them. But people seem most mad about the calendar one, so I think that’s the best. Mad constituents are good constituents, that’s what I say.”

Meanwhile, MAGA influencers continue to insist Orwell is the key to understanding modern tyranny. “Freedom is never having to know what’s in your meat,” a bald-headed podcaster declared after a plug for a protein supplement, ignoring Steinbeck’s entire subplot about starving children.

Andrew Morgan, a part time librarian says the fixation on Orwell and Huxley is itself part of the problem.

“We’re arguing about whether the state will crush us or seduce us while families sleep in their cars outside shuttered motels,” said Morgan. “The real dystopia isn’t imagined—it’s rented, foreclosed, and available for same-day eviction.”

Steinbeck once wrote, “And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, are so stupid they don’t even know it.” Swap “land” for “real estate apps” and you’ve got America in 2025.

The wrathful grapes have been ripening for over a century. And unlike Orwell’s telescreens or Huxley’s pleasure domes, Steinbeck’s warning didn’t require allegory—it just required paying the slightest amount of attention.

Surely, the more things change, the more they’ve stayed the same. Only the actors have changed, but the struggles, anger, hatred, and who those in charge say is the source of the troubles have shifted.