The Theme of Nostalgia

One of the songs appears in the Grape of Wrath is “McAlester’s Blue.” That song refers to a specific place although it is just a fictional song that Steinbeck makes up for the novel. However, in real life, some of the songs that the Okies remember do have a specific geographical reference. More importantly, the Okies’ song about where they come from shows that “the dominant theme of Bakersfield country music was nostalgia for home” (Dunbar-Ortiz, 25).  Through listening to the songs about the Okies’ home, we can expand our knowledge about the Okies that we learn in Steinbeck’s story and get a chance to understand how the Okies feel while traveling to California.

            The song “Oklahoma” is a good example that shows how to Okies sing songs to express their nostalgia for their home state. In that songs, it talks about the beautiful landscape in Oklahoma, such as the mistitle and the beautiful highway. Furthermore, the lyric mentions about the great childhood memory that the migrant workers from Oklahoma had. Moreover, the song ends by telling how they will never forget their home state even though they leave that state and travel far away to another place. The description of Oklahoma is the song is quite different from the deserted scene of Oklahoma that Steinbeck portrayed in the novel.