Tortilla Flat
by John Steinbeck
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Book Summary Information
Author: John SteinbeckEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1977-04-28
ISBN: 0140042407
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Book Reviews of Tortilla Flat
Book Review: ". . . and the tides rise and fall. . . ."
Summary: 5 Stars
". . . and the tides rise and fall as a great clepsydra."
The protagonists of TORTILLA FLAT are paisanos, and the word is descriptive. Evolving through Spanish from an Old French term meaning "peasant," the word connotes comrades or fellow countrymen. Indeed, Danny, Pilon, Big Joe Portagee, the Pirate, Jesus Maria, and the other personalities that one meets in this novel certainly qualify as comrades. Still, we must use the term advisedly, for their comradeship is not that of heroes, nor that of stolid laborers, nor even that of great criminal minds. No, it is the comradeship of simplicity, poverty, ignorance, despair, and, on occasion, of simple pleasure. It is the comradeship of survival through the inexorable passage of time.
The paisanos of TORTILLA FLAT survive without hope, without ambition, and without families, at least in the comfortable, middle-class definition of those terms. Yet, from their unquestioning viewpoints, they have all of these and more. Sometimes they hope for a little money to come their way, for without money one cannot buy wine and the joy that it brings. Their ambition may be to impress "Sweets" Ramirez to enjoy her favors for a night. And for a family, they have the all of the paisanos in Tortilla Flat above Monterey. In this light, the novel is both tragic and comic, tragic in that its souls are always questing, always in need of another bottle of wine or of a suit of clothes or of a bit of rent money or of a woman's company for an hour or so or of buried treasure in a haunted forest; comic in that a bottle of wine will bring joy, a two-bit piece (a quarter) constitutes wealth, a vacuum cleaner is a treasure in a house with no electricity. Here, of course, "comic" does not necessarily imply mirthfulness, though that frequently results, but rather the opposite of tragedy, success in life and fulfillment of desire, transient though success and fulfillment may be.
The theme of gain and loss repeats constantly: Gain comes with a new bottle of wine, loss with destruction of the annual bean crop. Gain comes with stealing a picnic basket with deviled eggs, loss when treasure in the forest turns out to be a geodetic survey marker. Gain comes when Torrelli buys Danny's house for $25, loss when the bill of sale is burned in the stove. Interwoven with this theme are the innumerable ironies of life: the air tight stove whose cracks emit light, the pride felt by owning a vacuum cleaner in a house with no power, a vacuum cleaner that, as one learns later, has no motor, making it the perfect status symbol for such a house, the relief that Danny feels when his second house burns, relieving him of some of the pressures of the responsibilities of a property owner, the health enjoyed by children who live on nothing but tortillas and beans. And is this not what life is all about--gains and losses, successes and failures, joys and sorrows, and the many ironies that preclude a too-logical existence?
Until very nearly the end, I felt that TORTILLA FLAT was actually up-beat, the paisanos always overcoming the adversities that life threw their way, always finding some means of obtaining that joy-filled gallon of wine, always successfully stealing the chicken that they needed for a celebratory feast, always finding a way to repay Danny for his hospitality, but then came the greatest irony of all. The responsibility that weighs on Danny as the focal point of his companions, as the provider of their shelter, as the relative anchor for the others is too great for his poor, simple soul that desires nothing more than the freedom of total irresponsibility. He struggles with this demon and loses. With his loss, the comradeship of the paisanos crumbles. Is this the moral of the story, that success brings responsibility, and that responsibility brings destruction of the individual? But the paisanos will continue, not as a group of comrades but as the individuals they were before. Perhaps their temporary coalescing into a comradeship was but the rise of the tide, which must, as a natural consequence, also fall. Perhaps the entire story is nothing more than a moment in the perpetual flow of time as measured by some "great clepsydra." Is this tragic or is it reassuring that such flow is immutable, is as timeless as the paisanos?
In discussing TORTILLA FLAT, it is customary to describe Danny as the corollary of King Arthur and the paisanos around him as the counterparts of the Knights of the Round Table. There are equivalences, of course, but I prefer to view the novel as an observation on today's world, the transience of men as contrasted with the tides, and perhaps the relativity of such concepts as "success," "happiness," "confidence," and "joy." Our paisanos enjoy all of these rewards--in terms of their own value system--despite the inevitable reversals of fortune that all men experience. Yes, I believe that I do find this book uplifting and actually positive in its theme, the poverty and ignorance of its characters notwithstanding. It certainly arouses many conflicting thoughts and questions in the reader, a result that places it squarely on one's "must read" list.
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