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Loading... The Grapes of Wrath (1939)by John Steinbeck
 Zura27 | May 7, 2013 |  Great epic yarn. My one complaint is the number of laborious respellings in the Okie dialogue. Oncet the copyright runs out, I jus' hope somebody can go though the tex' an' get rid o' some o' them 'postrophes. KarlNarveson | May 1, 2013 | This was one of the worst books I have ever read. Having said that, it ranks really high on my list because I think that Steinbeck did an amazing job at documenting the plight of the farmer during that era. I really felt for the family in that book, and every other farmer that was taken advantage of during that time period. Steinbeck zeroed in on very specific and heartbreaking moments during the journey of the family. I still remember the lines when he is describing the rotting fruit while the family starves. The word choice and imagery are really what made this book memorable to me. I also thought that the writing style of zooming in on what was happening with the family and then zooming out to what was happening to everyone was a great way to show that this was not a unique situation, that was just how things were then. NickiZ | May 1, 2013 | John Steinbeck claimed that when he wrote The Grapes of Wrath he did this damndest to rip a reader’s nerves to rags. He succeeded. At the same time he wrote one of the greatest books of all time. It is right up there with War and Peace. Not only is this book an incredible read, it is a must study for writers who want to improve their craft. For example, Steinbeck skillfully uses a technique that alternates chapters written from the general to the specific. About half of the chapters describe the awful conditions of the great flood of migrants who travel from Oklahoma to California telling us, “And so they moved, with starvation close behind them.” The other chapters details the journey of the Joad family and their courageous and disastrous flight from their failed farm in Oklahoma to the fallacious promise of a land filled with grapes and oranges and work for all. (  ) SharonPMoxley | Apr 29, 2013 | As with most Steinbeck, this book is on the depressing side, and yet (though I am a happy endings girl normally) I enjoyed it. The author pulls you into a very difficult time in our country's history and into the hearts and lives of some of its poorest inhabitants of the era. Their hardships and struggles tug at your heart. If I actually react emotionally to a story, the author has captured my imagination, and that is good book for me. That may be too subjective for some, but they don't have to take my recommendations! If you read and liked this book, try The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. ( ) Ameliapei | Apr 18, 2013 |
 Seventy years after The Grapes of Wrath was published, its themes – corporate greed, joblessness – are back with a vengeance. ... The peaks of one's adolescent reading can prove troughs in late middle age. Life moves on; not all books do. But 50 years later, The Grapes of Wrath seems as savage as ever, and richer for my greater awareness of what Steinbeck did with the Oklahoma dialect and with his characters.  It is Steinbeck's best novel, i.e., his toughest and tenderest, his roughest written and most mellifluous, his most realistic and, in its ending, his most melodramatic, his angriest and most idyllic. It is "great" in the way that Uncle Tom's Cabin was great—because it is inspired propaganda, half tract, half human-interest story, emotionalizing a great theme. Steinbeck has written a novel from the depths of his heart with a sincerity seldom equaled. It may be an exaggeration, but it is the exaggeration of an honest and splendid writer. Mr. Steinbeck's triumph is that he has created, out of a remarkable sympathy and understanding, characters whose full and complete actuality will withstand any scrutiny. Is contained inThe Steinbeck Centennial Collection (Boxed Set) by John Steinbeck Cannery Row | The Grapes of Wrath | Of Mice and Men | Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck Cannery Row | East of Eden | The Grapes of Wrath | The Moon is Down | Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath | The Harvest Gypsies | The Log from the Sea of Cortez | The Long Valley by John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath | The Pearl by John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath | Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck Cannery Row | East of Eden | The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck Cannery Row | East of Eden | The Grapes of Wrath | Of Mice & Men | The Pearl | Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck Cannery Row | East of Eden | The Grapes of Wrath | Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck Six Volume Set: Grapes of Wrath; Long Valley; Winter of Our Discontent; Tortilla Flat / of Mice and Men; Travels With Charley; and East of Eden by John Steinbeck Setinbeck Hardcover Collection: Tortilla Flat, The Winter of Our Discontent, East of Eden, The Grapes of Wrath, Travels with Charley, & The Long Valley by John Steinbeck ContainsHas the adaptationWas inspired byInspiredObscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck's the Grapes of Wrath by Rick Wartzman Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck Has as a studyHas as a commentary on the textHas as a student's study guide
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The prize must have come, at least in part, because alongside the poverty and dispossession, Steinbeck chronicled the Joads' refusal, even inability, to let go of their faltering but unmistakable hold on human dignity. Witnessing their degeneration from Oklahoma farmers to a diminished band of migrant workers is nothing short of crushing. The Joads lose family members to death and cowardice as they go, and are challenged by everything from weather to the authorities to the California locals themselves. As Tom Joad puts it: "They're a-workin' away at our spirits. They're a tryin' to make us cringe an' crawl like a whipped bitch. They tryin' to break us. Why, Jesus Christ, Ma, they comes a time when the on'y way a fella can keep his decency is by takin' a sock at a cop. They're workin' on our decency."
The point, though, is that decency remains intact, if somewhat battle-scarred, and this, as much as the depression and the plight of the "Okies," is a part of American history. When the California of their dreams proves to be less than edenic, Ma tells Tom: "You got to have patience. Why, Tom--us people will go on livin' when all them people is gone. Why, Tom, we're the people that live. They ain't gonna wipe us out. Why, we're the people--we go on." It's almost as if she's talking about the very novel she inhabits, for Steinbeck's characters, more than most literary creations, do go on. They continue, now as much as ever, to illuminate and humanize an era for generations of readers who, thankfully, have no experiential point of reference for understanding the depression. The book's final, haunting image of Rose of Sharon--Rosasharn, as they call her--the eldest Joad daughter, forcing the milk intended for her stillborn baby onto a starving stranger, is a lesson on the grandest scale. "'You got to,'" she says, simply. And so do we all. --Melanie Rehak
(retrieved from Amazon Thu, 14 Feb 2013 13:44:09 -0500)
The Grapes of Wrath is a landmark of American literature. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man's fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman's stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. Although it follows the movement of thousands of men and women and the transformation of an entire nation, The Grapes of Wrath is also the story of one Oklahoma family, the Joads, who are driven off their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity. First published in 1939, The Grapes of Wrath summed up its era in the way that Uncle Tom's Cabin summed up the years of slavery before the Civil War. Sensitive to fascist and communist criticism, Steinbeck insisted that: The Battle Hymn of the Republic be printed in its entirety in the first edition of the book-which takes its title from the first verse: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck's fictional chronicle of the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930's is perhaps the most American of American Classics.… (more)
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This novel though, caught my attention right away and kept it throughout. A beautiful story about desperate times and actions. I loved the emotions that permeated through the novel.
Would definitely recommend and should probably read again. (