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The Forgotten Village
The novelist who wrote The Grapes of Wrath and the director who produced Crisis and Lights Out in Europe combined their superb talents to tell the story of the coming of modern medicine to the natives of Mexico. There have been several notable examples of this pen-camera method of narration, but The Forgotten Village is unique among them in that the text was written before a single picture was shot. The book and the movie from which it was made have, thus, a continuity and a dramatic growth not to be found in the so-called "documentary" films.
The camera crew that, headed by Kline and with Steinbeck's script at hand, recorded this narrative of birth and death, of witch doctors and vaccines, of the old Mexico and the new, spent nine months off the trails of Mexico. They traveled thousands of miles to find just the village they needed; they borrowed children from the government school, took men from the fields, their wives from the markets, and old medicine woman from her hut by the side of the trail. The motion picture they made (for release in 1941) is 8,000 feet long. From this wealth of pictures 136 photographs were selected for their intrinsic beauty and for the graceful harmony with which they accompany Steinbeck's text.
This new script-photograph technique of narration conveys its ideas with unexcelled brilliance and immediacy. In the hands of such master story-tellers as Steinbeck and Kline, it makes the reader catch his breath for the beauty and the truth of the tale.
The camera crew that, headed by Kline and with Steinbeck's script at hand, recorded this narrative of birth and death, of witch doctors and vaccines, of the old Mexico and the new, spent nine months off the trails of Mexico. They traveled thousands of miles to find just the village they needed; they borrowed children from the government school, took men from the fields, their wives from the markets, and old medicine woman from her hut by the side of the trail. The motion picture they made (for release in 1941) is 8,000 feet long. From this wealth of pictures 136 photographs were selected for their intrinsic beauty and for the graceful harmony with which they accompany Steinbeck's text.
This new script-photograph technique of narration conveys its ideas with unexcelled brilliance and immediacy. In the hands of such master story-tellers as Steinbeck and Kline, it makes the reader catch his breath for the beauty and the truth of the tale.
143 pages
First published January 1, 1941
10 people are currently reading
691 people want to read
About the author
John Steinbeck
1,046 books26.8k followersJohn Ernst Steinbeck was an American writer. He won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception". He has been called "a giant of American letters."
During his writing career, he authored 33 books, with one book coauthored alongside Edward F. Ricketts, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and two collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat (1935) and Cannery Row (1945), the multi-generation epic East of Eden (1952), and the novellas The Red Pony (1933) and Of Mice and Men (1937). The Pulitzer Prize–winning The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece and part of the American literary canon. By the 75th anniversary of its publishing date, it had sold 14 million copies.
Most of Steinbeck's work is set in central California, particularly in the Salinas Valley and the California Coast Ranges region. His works frequently explored the themes of fate and injustice, especially as applied to downtrodden or everyman protagonists.
During his writing career, he authored 33 books, with one book coauthored alongside Edward F. Ricketts, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and two collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat (1935) and Cannery Row (1945), the multi-generation epic East of Eden (1952), and the novellas The Red Pony (1933) and Of Mice and Men (1937). The Pulitzer Prize–winning The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece and part of the American literary canon. By the 75th anniversary of its publishing date, it had sold 14 million copies.
Most of Steinbeck's work is set in central California, particularly in the Salinas Valley and the California Coast Ranges region. His works frequently explored the themes of fate and injustice, especially as applied to downtrodden or everyman protagonists.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews
May 1, 2025
workers and the indigene in steinbeck's literature. may day.
January 29, 2022
This shook me to the core. I had owned the book for over a decade and didn’t even know what it was about, except that it was based on a 1941 movie made by Steinbeck, who wrote the screenplay, with images from the film appearing on each page. I don’t know what caused me to pick it up and read it now, but I needed it. *spoilers ahead*
The story is about a small Mexican village in which the children suddenly fall ill. The charlatan medicine woman claims she can cure them with snake skins and feathers. However, the local teacher and one of his pupils find evidence that the water in the village well is infected with “small animals” – microbes – that are causing sickness. He brings in doctors from the nearby city to clean the well with a powder and to inject the children with a vaccine. The villagers, roused by the old superstitions of the fraudulent medicine woman, claim the doctors are there to harm their children. So they cling to the old ways of the medicine woman as their children continue to die. The doctors save those children whose families allow the injection. The pupil, exiled by his family for "shaming" them, is sent by his teacher to the medical school in the city, in the hope that he, along with other young people throughout the country, might learn the skills needed to lead their villages out of darkness.
Do I even need to explain the significance in 2022?
As with many of his other books – America and Americans, In Dubious Battle, Travels with Charley, The Grapes of Wrath – Steinbeck speaks directly to modern readers who urgently need his experience, empathy, voice, and wisdom.
The story is about a small Mexican village in which the children suddenly fall ill. The charlatan medicine woman claims she can cure them with snake skins and feathers. However, the local teacher and one of his pupils find evidence that the water in the village well is infected with “small animals” – microbes – that are causing sickness. He brings in doctors from the nearby city to clean the well with a powder and to inject the children with a vaccine. The villagers, roused by the old superstitions of the fraudulent medicine woman, claim the doctors are there to harm their children. So they cling to the old ways of the medicine woman as their children continue to die. The doctors save those children whose families allow the injection. The pupil, exiled by his family for "shaming" them, is sent by his teacher to the medical school in the city, in the hope that he, along with other young people throughout the country, might learn the skills needed to lead their villages out of darkness.
Do I even need to explain the significance in 2022?
As with many of his other books – America and Americans, In Dubious Battle, Travels with Charley, The Grapes of Wrath – Steinbeck speaks directly to modern readers who urgently need his experience, empathy, voice, and wisdom.
February 12, 2021
The Forgotten Village was a film released in 1941 with a story by John Steinbeck and narrated by Burgess Meredith. Some time afterward, his story was paired with images from the movie and released as a book. This is a really quick read. Although it’s almost 150 pages, each page has about 6 lines or less of text, and several pages have either one line or nothing written at all. The whole book took me less than 30 minutes to read, and a good bit of that was spent looking at pictures.
It’s difficult to even categorize this book, as it’s release was billed as a documentary, but it’s more of a fictional story that was meant to be universal for more primitive cultures. A family deals with illness of their children. They are superstitious as to what will work as medicine and what will not. The son wants to try modern medicine and is ostracized by his father for choosing to do so. There’s not much more there to discuss.
The photos are OK, they support what you’re reading in the story but they’re also a bit grainy and taken from film stills. These aren’t the quality you’d pick up the book just to try. At the same time, the story is not as developed as Steinbeck’s other writing, as it was not intended to be read stand alone. As a Steinbeck fanatic, I’m glad I checked it out, but this was the least essential/rewarding book in his catalog I’ve read.
It’s difficult to even categorize this book, as it’s release was billed as a documentary, but it’s more of a fictional story that was meant to be universal for more primitive cultures. A family deals with illness of their children. They are superstitious as to what will work as medicine and what will not. The son wants to try modern medicine and is ostracized by his father for choosing to do so. There’s not much more there to discuss.
The photos are OK, they support what you’re reading in the story but they’re also a bit grainy and taken from film stills. These aren’t the quality you’d pick up the book just to try. At the same time, the story is not as developed as Steinbeck’s other writing, as it was not intended to be read stand alone. As a Steinbeck fanatic, I’m glad I checked it out, but this was the least essential/rewarding book in his catalog I’ve read.
April 23, 2018
I love John Steinbeck... he is my literary crush. And although this story reflects his writing style, and has a theme that is similar to that found in all his other writings, I never connected with it emotionally. Generally Steinbeck grabs my heart, throws it on the ground and crushes it. Generally he makes me cry. Perhaps this is just too short for me to have the same emotional reaction.
April 2, 2024
(2.5 star) While I am a great admirer of Steinbeck, this little script seemed to fall short of the usual profundity that Steinbeck has delivered. Still a story with the morals of humanity in focus, there was a lack of real character depth that makes it difficult to feel connected.
June 1, 2014
The tale is set in Mexico. But it very well could have been in India, or any other part of the world where myths rule more than medicine and superstition holds monopoly over life.
Narrated with a pen-camera style, the story tells of a little boy trying his best to save the life of his siblings. But faced with the huge giant of superstition, the little boy can't even stand up a david to the golliath.
We may have moved on to modern times but it's chilling how once people could have so strongly persisted, even when they were faced with the contrary proof. We've forgotten those tales. In the forgotten village
Narrated with a pen-camera style, the story tells of a little boy trying his best to save the life of his siblings. But faced with the huge giant of superstition, the little boy can't even stand up a david to the golliath.
We may have moved on to modern times but it's chilling how once people could have so strongly persisted, even when they were faced with the contrary proof. We've forgotten those tales. In the forgotten village
July 12, 2016
I'm not researching the books I'm reading in advance so I never know what to expect when I get the next Steinbeck. This was a nice surprise--pictures! Of course, they are decades old and so the quality isn't amazing, but there was something refreshing about this narrative nonetheless. The story itself is simple and felt familiar after reading a few Steinbeck books with similar themes.
April 17, 2015
I like Steinbeck and this little story was no different, though this story was nothing special. It is the story of a rural village in Mexico and the impact of religion on the villagers ideas about medicine and sickness. It is an interesting look into this culture.
June 23, 2021
This is a very short book by Steinbeck that was actually a script for a documentary. It outlines the story of illnesses in Mexico, especially in the rural villages that still rely on witch doctors. The story revolves around a family who loses a son to sickness. The son was 'healed' by the local witch doctor, but his situation only became worse with time. Then, more children became sick, which made the father tell his son to send for the doctors. The witch doctor did not want to lose her important position in the village, and so she started telling people that the doctors were going to poison the children. And the story unfolds, and I should not burn the plot for the reader.
I generally liked the idea that often, progress is not attained by informing and enlightening the men and women of the village, but to try to imprint those ideas into the minds of the young so that when they replace their elders, they can think in terms of these new ideas. However, this idea is not without its shortcomings and drawbacks! Much brain-washing can be done this way to children who can't know better; and for the same reasons the elders can't have their intellectual dispositions changed (due to a lack of critical thinking, and stakes and investments in their beliefs), the same problem will be encountered in the younger generations.
I generally liked the idea that often, progress is not attained by informing and enlightening the men and women of the village, but to try to imprint those ideas into the minds of the young so that when they replace their elders, they can think in terms of these new ideas. However, this idea is not without its shortcomings and drawbacks! Much brain-washing can be done this way to children who can't know better; and for the same reasons the elders can't have their intellectual dispositions changed (due to a lack of critical thinking, and stakes and investments in their beliefs), the same problem will be encountered in the younger generations.
August 16, 2017
It is always true that stories will have great impact if we ourselves are somehow experienced it.
This is the story of a young family in the forgotten village of Mexico (or Indian). The family were happy and they were waiting for the birth of a new child. In the village there was a Wise Woman, who is a shaman, a caster to ward off evil spirits and to heal the sick. They believed it. They were of old ways.
One day, they were struck by a disease, which caught lives of the children in the village. This character, have the answer, but the village, being so long with their habits and belief, refuse to take part. And the problems arise.
This is a story about how resisting to change can be fatal, and how, in finding the new ways to make something better is something scary. We do not know if the path we chose will bear fruit, but we know that this is the path to go and it must be done. Change is a must, however some might not agree to this. And this is what I am facing right now, which is why the story has greater value to me, now that the character did what he did.
I really recommend this.
This is the story of a young family in the forgotten village of Mexico (or Indian). The family were happy and they were waiting for the birth of a new child. In the village there was a Wise Woman, who is a shaman, a caster to ward off evil spirits and to heal the sick. They believed it. They were of old ways.
One day, they were struck by a disease, which caught lives of the children in the village. This character, have the answer, but the village, being so long with their habits and belief, refuse to take part. And the problems arise.
This is a story about how resisting to change can be fatal, and how, in finding the new ways to make something better is something scary. We do not know if the path we chose will bear fruit, but we know that this is the path to go and it must be done. Change is a must, however some might not agree to this. And this is what I am facing right now, which is why the story has greater value to me, now that the character did what he did.
I really recommend this.
January 31, 2018
Being a lover of JS and a completionist of sorts I had to 'go through it'. Can't really justify saying I 'read' the book since it turned out to be 99.734675% pictures. The story of this pre-modernized village in Mexico is, I am sorry to say, void of any of the great prose you might be hoping for. What you do have here is a wonderful first hand account of indigenous peoples, with their limited world-views, sick children and a fierce skepticism to the medicine and doctors capable of saving said kids. The introduction explained that the film (which this book is based on) is the experience of the author and movie crew who decidedly did not intervene in the affairs or the villagers; they just watched. This alone is worth the brief flipping through.
June 11, 2021
This isn't what I expected? This is super short, kind of a Steinbeck version of a graphic novel, kind of, but with real photos from the 30s/40s. It has the same kind of story you get from Steinbeck where the story kind of tugs on you, but it's very very very short, no characters really, no setting really. This could be set in any third world country, or could even be extrapolated to modern day with people who don't believe in science and medicine. Anyway, good for Steinbeck completionists, otherwise, not really needed to be read.
March 5, 2024
Delightful book ... would love to see the unusual movie from which they took stills for the book. Old school stuff about peasant, rural Mexico 80 years ago. Reading this book took me back to the very same geography & culture that was still prevalent & in which I was immersed, 47 years ago. Many rural villages are now mere shadows of their former selves, their citizens having left for urban centers or the USA. Cartel violence has taken its toll.
January 13, 2020
You can read this beautiful book that is filled with pictures in less than an hour. Or you could watch the film on Youtube.
Here's my blog on the book. Be warned that the blog tells the whole story, but I doubt that knowing the story would intefere much with your enjoyment of the book:
https://richardswsmith.wordpress.com/...
Here's my blog on the book. Be warned that the blog tells the whole story, but I doubt that knowing the story would intefere much with your enjoyment of the book:
https://richardswsmith.wordpress.com/...
February 20, 2021
My dad came from an indigenous tribe and he said that before, their elders would hide the children from vaccinations because they saw the side effects and thought that the vaccines were making their kids sick; thus, to be avoided.
I liked the message, storyline and pictures but the tone of the narrator talking too simply to children lowered the impact of the story.
I liked the message, storyline and pictures but the tone of the narrator talking too simply to children lowered the impact of the story.
January 6, 2021
Ancient myth to modern medicine, a short but sweet account of the old ways meeting the new.
Straightforward prose, with glimmers of Steinbeck’s harshness shining through, “little streams of people from the villages swelled to a river”.
Lovely pictures, too.
Straightforward prose, with glimmers of Steinbeck’s harshness shining through, “little streams of people from the villages swelled to a river”.
Lovely pictures, too.
October 6, 2022
Steinbeck is always worth the read. This is the most unusual format because it was a movie, and these are images from the film. The story is straightforward and heartbreaking, as usual from Steinbeck.
March 13, 2019
One more for John Steinbeck not as good as some of his other works but still good.
October 25, 2019
Steinbeck's sensitive tale of life in a poor Mexican village is the novelization of a movie which pits traditional villagers confronting modernity.
Want to read
July 19, 2020elibrary
February 11, 2021
The difficulties of modern change in a new village which must stem from the people to be successful.
Read
March 12, 2022It felt weird to listen to a short story about people denying the existence of germs while I live through a pandemic IRL.
October 25, 2022
Steinbeck goes out of his normal track in this book. If you're a Steinbeck fan, you'll be delighted in this quite different book!
January 24, 2023
Who can believe that back in the days they were against vaccines.........
July 23, 2023
Wow, Steinbeck!
June 21, 2024
This is a picture book and quite different for Steinbeck. It would be great to share with children. The photography is wonderful and the message of old meets modern is interesting too think about.
January 23, 2025
與其說是一本書，還不如說是短短的一篇文章。
發人省思的無知的可怕，闡述著「知識就是力量」。
發人省思的無知的可怕，闡述著「知識就是力量」。
June 18, 2025
An adult picture book!
September 2, 2025
I really enjoy Steinbeck but this one was lacking. A “white savior” story with no explaining the reasonable fears and cultural beliefs.
December 30, 2020
As a movie companion, it's a brief but good read. The photographs are great. The plot (such as it is) is pretty formulaic. It's probably one for a Steinbeck completist (such as myself).
Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews