DALL-E paints the Faces of The Grapes of Wrath
I fed cliff notes from a John Steinbeck novel to the DALL-E AI and this is what it gave back.
I read an article here on Medium by Jim Clyde Monge that seemed like clickbait, but only because it involved Harry Potter characters, and many people under 40 love Harry Potter. Every nerd likes Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Star Wars, or Star Trek (or Stargate if you know what’s good). I was more into Lord of the Rings, but I know a few things about the realm of Harry Potter.
The concept of bringing literary characters to life using AI will continue at Harry Potter. PS: It wasn’t clickbait. It was super good. It was so good that I was inspired to do the same for my favorite book, The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck.
I put character notes into DALL-E mini because DALL-E 2 is invite-only as of now after digging through cliffnotes.com, sparknotes.com, and a big shout out to shmoop.com, which had descriptions for even more minor characters like the children, Winfield and Ruthie.
After 12 hours of sifting through nightmare fuel on DALL-E Mini, I present to you the cast of Grapes of Wrath through the eye of a machine based on the numerous descriptions taken directly from the text and the scholars who do the work on these study aid sites. Any gaps in the character description, such as age, were filled in by yours truly, having listened to the book back in 2020. I am currently listening to it again.
I always hated to read. I grew up with a Nintendo. However, I genuinely enjoyed Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. I finished it in one day and couldn’t put it down. The same guy who couldn’t finish The Hobbit the year before. What was it about Steinbeck that made an undiagnosed ADHD student speed-run a book?”
There’s something about John Steinbeck’s writing that I just connect with. While he shows me the dense humanity in settings that are not typically within my realm of interest, Neil Gaiman is the only living author I can connect with.
Although Gaiman’s writings are full of mythical creatures such as angels, demons, dwarves, and demigods, and even an imprisoned Santa, Steinbeck focuses on places and times that never particularly interested me before. He wrote about the bleak and dusty black-and-white world of the Great Depression, where there was no corn to be found and a sad woman struggling to take care of her children. As a child, that was all I knew about that period in history.
In the US in 2020, farmers were throwing away produce and dairy because they couldn’t get the product moved due to logistical constraints of the Covid-19 lockdowns. Political journalist and commentator Krystal Ball took notice.
On her show with Sagar Enjeti (at the time called The Hill Rising, but since they have gone independent with their show Breaking Points on YouTube, check them out), Krystal dedicated a whole segment of the show to this issue of wasted food.
She went on to read an excerpt from The Grapes of Wrath in which a scene of mountains of oranges being soaked with gasoline to keep hungry migrants from getting free food.
Finally, I understood what The Grapes of Wrath might be about. I suddenly had an interest. After each photo, I will quote a short excerpt from The Grapes of Wrath involving each character.
I do this not to play with copyright infringement but to give the readers who may have never read or thought about reading The Grapes of Wrath an enticing insight into what each character is about. I have hand-picked these excerpts based on what I remember most about a character.
Anything in italics below each of the following images is directly attributed to John Steinbeck and his publishers. I have added line breaks for more accessible mobile and online reading.
This article is accessible to all because I want anyone reading this story to read (or listen to on Audible or Scribd) The Grapes of Wrath. The issues addressed in this work are as prevalent today as in the 1930s. From the issues of unlivable wages and predatory capitalism to union busting and wealth inequality, it’s challenging to experience Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath without seeing the parallels to life for most people in modern America.
All quoted excerpts below the following images are attributed to
Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath, The Viking Press-James Lloyd, 1939
Without further ado, The characters of John Steinbeck’s
The Grapes of Wrath
as interpreted by DALL-E.
MA JOAD
“How am I gonna know about ya, Tommy? Why they could kill ya and I’d never know. They could hurt ya. How am I gonna know?
PA JOAD
Pa spoke generally to the circle. “It’s dirt hard for folks to tear up an’ go. Folks like
us that had our place. We ain’t shif’less. Till we got tractored off, we was people with a farm.”
JIM CASY
“I was a preacher,” said the man seriously. “Reverend Jim Casy — was a Burning
Busher. Used to howl out the name of Jesus to glory. And used to get an irrigation
ditch so squirmin’ full of repented sinners half of ’em like to drowned.But not no more,” he sighed. “Jus Jim Casy now. Ain’t got the call no more. Got a lot of sinful idears — but they seem kinda sensible.”
TOM JOAD
Tom laughed uneasily, “Well, maybe like Casy says, a fella ain’t got a soul of his
own, but on’y a piece of a big one — an’ then — “
“Then what, Tom?”
“Then it don’ matter. Then I’ll be all aroun’ in the dark. I’ll be ever’where — wherever you look. Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. If Casy knowed, why, I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad an’ — I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folks eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses
they build — why, I’ll be there.
FUN FACT:
The Grapes of Wrath was banned briefly in the Soviet Union, despite it’s left leaning message, because it showed that even the poorest Americans could afford an automobile.
It was also banned for entirely different reasons in:
Kansas City, Missouri, 1939
Kern County California, 1939
Burned in East St. Louis, Illinois Public Library and Barred from the Buffalo, New York Public Library
Ireland, 1953
Turkey, 1973
Many rural US school districts in the 1980s, particularly for it’s use of the phrase “God damn”.
Later in the 1990s it would face two more challenges from schools in Greenville, South Carolina and Union City, Tennessee, again for it’s use of the terms God and Jesus in what was considered by local parents to be a profane manner.
Thank you to the editors at Wikipedia for providing this information.
ROSE OF SHARON
Me an’ Connie don’t want to live in the country no more. We got it all planned up what we gonna do.
Well, we talked about it, me an’ Connie. Ma, we want to live in a town. Connie gonna get a job in a store or maybe a factory. An’ he’s gonna study at home, maybe radios, so he can get to be a expert an’ maybe later have his own store. An’ we’ll go to pitchers whenever.
An’ Connie says I’m gonna have a doctor when the baby’s born; an’ he says we’ll see how times is, an’ maybe I’ll go to a hospiddle. An’ we’ll have a car, a little car. An’ when he gets done studying at night, why — it’ll be nice, an’ he tore a page out of Western Love Stories, an’ he’s gonna send off for a course ’cause it don’t cost nothin’ to send off. Says right on that clipping.
CONNIE RIVERS
Connie, her nineteen-year-old husband, who had married a plump, passionate hoyden, was still frightened and bewildered at the change in her; for there were no more cat fights in bed, biting and scratching with muffled giggles and final tears.
There was a balanced, careful, wise creature who smiled shyly but very firmly at him. Connie was proud and fearful of Rose of Sharon. Whenever he could, he put a hand on her or stood close, so that his body touched her at hip and shoulder, and he felt that this kept a relation that might be departing.
GRAMPA JOAD
“You look like a heller yet, Grampa,” said Tom.
“Well, I am, kinda. But I ain’t nowheres near the fella I was. Jus’ let me get out to California where I can pick me an orange when I want it. Or grapes.There’s a thing I ain’t never had enough of. Gonna get me a whole big bunch of grapes off a bush, or whatever, an’ I’m gonna squash ’em on my face an’ let ’em run offen my chin.”
GRANMA JOAD
Behind him hobbled Granma, who had survived only because she was as mean as her husband. She had held her own with a shrill ferocious religiosity that was as lecherous and as savage as anything Grampa could offer.
Once, after a meeting, while she was still speaking in tongues, she fired both barrels of a shotgun at her husband, ripping one of his buttocks nearly off, and after that he admired her and did not try to torture her as children torture bugs. As she walked she hiked her Mother Hubbard up to her knees, and she bleated her shrill terrible war cry: “Pu-raise Gawd fur vittory.”
AL JOAD
Tom opened the hood and looked at the big greasy engine. And Pa came up beside him. He said, “Your brother Al looked her over before we bought her. He says she’s all right.”
“What’s he know? He’s just a squirt,” said Tom.
“He worked for a company. Drove truck last year. He knows quite a little. Smart aleck like he is. He knows. He can tinker an engine, Al can.”
Tom asked, “Where’s he now?”“Well,” said Pa, “he’s a-billygoatin’ aroun’ the country. Tom-cattin’ hisself to death. Smart-aleck sixteen-year-older, an’ his nuts is just a-eggin’ him on. He don’t think of nothin’ but girls and engines. A plain smart aleck. Ain’t been in nights for a week.”
JOHN “UNCLE JOHN” JOAD
The death of his wife, followed by months of being alone, had marked him with guilt and shame and had left an unbreaking loneliness on him. But there were things he could not escape. Being one of the heads of the family, he had to govern; and now he had to sit on the honor seat beside the driver.
RUTHIE JOAD
Ruthie and Winfield hopped excitedly about in the dust, like crazy things. Ruthie
whispered hoarsely to Winfield, “Killin’ pigs and goin’ to California. Killin’ pigs and goin’ — all the same time.”And Winfield was reduced to madness. He stuck his finger against his throat, made a horrible face, and wobbled about, weakly shrilling, “I’m a ol’ pig. Look. I’m a ol’ pig. Look at the blood, Ruthie!” And he staggered and sank to the ground, and waved arms and legs weakly.
But Ruthie was older, and she knew the tremendousness of the time. “And goin’ to California,” she said again. And she knew this was the great time in her life so far.
WINFIELD JOAD
“You was not,” Winfield said. “You’re a dirty liar.”
“Awright,” she said. “If I’m a liar I ain’t gonna tell you nothin’ that happened. I ain’t gonna tell how the fella got killed with a stab knife an’ how they was a bear come in an’ took off a little chile.”
“They wasn’t no bear,” Winfield said uneasily. He brushed up his hair with his fingers and he pulled down his overalls at the crotch. “All right — they wasn’t no bear,” she said sarcastically. “An’ they ain’t no white things made outa dish-stuff, like in the catalogues.”
Winfield regarded her gravely. He pointed to the sanitary unit. “In there?” he asked.
“I’m a dirty liar,” Ruthie said. “It ain’t gonna do me no good to tell stuff to you.”
“Le’s go look,” Winfield said.
“I already been,” Ruthie said. “I already set on ’em. I even pee’d in one.”
“You never neither,” said Winfield.
NOAH JOAD
Behind them, moving slowly and evenly, but keeping up, came Pa and Noah — Noah the first-born, tall and strange, walking always with a wondering look on his face, calm and puzzled. He had never been angry in his life.
He looked in wonder at angry people, wonder and uneasiness, as normal people look at the insane. Noah moved slowly, spoke seldom, and then so slowly that people who did not know him often thought him stupid.
He was not stupid, but he was strange. He had little pride, no sexual urges. He worked and slept in a curious rhythm that nevertheless sufficed him. He was fond of his folks, but never showed it in any way.
I hope you had fun reading this. Thank you to all the people whose work helped build this article. I am grateful to every John Steinbeck publisher, programmer, online cheat site scholar, and Wikipedia editor.
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