The Grapes of Wrath (original 1939; edition 1939)

This was the first Steinbeck novel that I crisply enjoyed. It could be that I've only read Steinbeck for classes, so as a forced read they don't go down so well.

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. ( )

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.

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.

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. ( )

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. ( )

A very tragic, loving story of survival. It is the type of story which will make one reflect of the quality of life during this era. Both the greediness of mankind and the struggle and strength of the poor are capture in this story. ( )

I think that my expectations for this book were wildly overinflated. I so loved reading other books by John Steinbeck that I expected this, his most-acclaimed work, to be eons better than the others I'd read. It's a good story, heart-breaking and well-told, but it didn't grab me as much as some of his "lesser" works. ( )

Anybody wanting to understand what life was like during the Depression should read this book. My maternal grandmother survived it. They lived in Kansas. They ate grass. Those years changed my grandmother forever. I think I finally understand why she was who she. Steinbeck's novel is based on solid and extensive research, even if it is a book of fiction.

I am in a pickle. I cannot tell you whether by the end I found it to be depressing. That would be a spoiler. I will say instead that how ever it ends, it is moving and engaging every bit of the way. Talk about resilient, generous, warm and wonderful people! The book is filled with humor.

I personally do not understand how this book could in any way be a criticism of Okies! The contrary is true. It is if anything the Californians that are to be criticized, and the government for not adequately helping the migrants. On this issue the following two links are interesting. I want to thank my GR friend Kim for leading me to both.

Banning of “Grapes of Wrath” in California: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95190615

Dislike of “Grapes of Wrath” in Oklahoma:
http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/g/gr010.html

I think this book by Steinbeck is fabulous, but the audiobook narrated by John Chancer is still better. When you listen to this you think you are at the movies. Each character has a special voice. This is an impressive performance which could in no way be improved upon. I strongly recommend that you listen to this book rather than read it.
You don't listen to books? OK, then read it, but do it soon. I am not kidding, this is a MUST read!!!

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I just listened to chapter 15, another one of those chapters that some call boring! (Please see my previous entry "through chapter 13". I adored it. It is about a little "joint", a café on Route 66, the road that the Joad family is traveling from Oklahoma to California where there will be work and well-paid jobs and oranges to pick off the trees. Being one of those so-called "boring" chapters it wasn't about the Joads, but about Al and his wife and the truckers. As explained below some readers say these chapters are boring. Some also say this book is depressing, and I don't agree with that either. I define "not depressing" books as those that show how people who have nothing are still generous and kind. You should read this book just for this chapter. Not only do I like Al and his wife, but within this chapter is found the following line, a sign on their Route 66 café wall: "Ladies may smoke, but be careful where you put your butts." So are you crying or laughing? Is this depressing? Note, you have only read one line of this marvelous chapter.

Well, what IS depressing is that I am sure some bad stuff will be happening. I am scared to death what may happen to these people. They aren't just anybody any more. I care for them, all of them!

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Through chapter 13: I am head over heels in love with this! Although the plight of Okies is movingly portrayed, life's small beauties and charms are ever present too. Everybody says this book is depressing. I do not find that so. For example, there is an « “ex-preacher” that says such wise things. This is about a family that is forced to move to California. The drought and the Depression have ruined them and all others. The land is emptied. The banks force the tenants off their land. But NEVERTHELESS, there is strength in these people. There is humor in the small things. Dogs in heat and a grandfather that is all bluster and cannot button up his fly, pajamas or underwear. These small things are in fact very amusing.

Steinbeck builds the feeling of the time by interspersing the chapters about the family with chapters about what is happening around them. These chapters create a mood that makes you better see the total picture. For example, one of these diversionary chapters depicts a used car dealer. "Oh, if he only had more jalopies to sell...." then he would make some profit. Of course his mark-up is outrageously high. Yep, that truck he purchased for $10 and sold it for $50 AND the buyer additionally agreed to $10 payment for another 4 months. "Even if the family doesn't pay the monthly installments he has certainly hit the jackpot with that sucker," he raucously explains to us. "Everybody has to make a living somehow!" Right? By whatever means possible. It is eat or be eaten. That is the gist of this chapter. My words, not Steinbeck’s, except for that first quote. The chapter is filled with the owner's sales cries to his assistant and customers. Another is about a land-turtle crossing a road, his slow plodding passage forward. One is about the cornfields and how they are drying up. You see them shrivel. You see the blazing hot, red sun. Steinbeck can certainly string his words with the touch of an artist, a magician, a conjurer. Some might find these chapters unnecessary or distracting....or even boring. Me, I like them; they create a mood of that time and place. This is really how the Depression was for those living it.

Completed Mar 6, 2013 ( )

I found this quite hard to get through. The ending actually touched me quite a lot. But there was so much detail that didn't seem to move anything along. ( )

Amazing writing. Amazing story, especially when I realize that it was written so close to the story's setting. Steinbeck's insight into the fall of the family farm and the struggle of the people in its aftermath is astounding. It's so well-written, it is even a commentary on current society and how the large corporation, so removed from the work itself, destroys lives. That the book could be written in another era about that era and still apply to a subsequent era speaks volumes into why it is such a classic. So many layers and complex characters in this tale of a family.

I read the book in preparation for seeing the play at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. The adaptation is good, and keeps many of the themes alive -- most of the dialogue comes straight from the novel, too. Of course the book is much richer. The play is almost a highlights reel of the story. The Stratford production is excellent. ( )

this is a hefty one, but worth committing to. ( )

This was tougher to read than I had expected. If felt vaguely similar to Moby-Dick in structure. With Moby-Dick there is lots and lots of informational chapters, with a little story thrown in, so when the whale finally appears, it is all the more impressive & climatic. With Grapes of Wrath, the Joad's story alternates chapters with items that are more... for lack of a better word, journalistic. Not always factual, but brief more objective episodes that provide tiny slices of the bigger, national picture. And while they added some depth to the story, the interruptions made for some disjointed reading. The end, which many reviewers referred to as shocking, to me seemed just odd. It just sort of... ends. However, the writing is at times stunning and I think it is a book that will only get better with re-reading. ( )

When I was in ninth grade, our English teacher assigned each of us a novel to read. He chose them carefully, I think, for each student. Mine was The Grapes of Wrath. It was a life-changing book for me. Coming from New England, I'm not sure I had known much about the Depression and the Dust Bowl before then; my grandparents had known hard times, but managed to put food on the table, and my dairying grandfather didn't lose his farm. I think this book made me a Democrat. Thank you, Rob McConville, wherever you are! ( )

I read this in high school, and that was many moons ago...

The fact that I still retain a few vivid images from this tale is a testament to its power. I also remember a few philosophical points...Steinbeck beat me over the head far too many times for me to forget them.

To me, this book is about how forces beyond our control can plunge one's family into poverty. Having studied my own family's genealogy, I have a great appreciation for the fact that that is something which every family must eventually endure.

In the modern world, the default solution to trying times/events is a government handout. I do not embrace that answer. IMO, Steinbeck's Joad family had a better solution: they took the bit in their teeth, and they moved on to find better times/places. (Of course, they met resistance, but survivors of tribulations must think like Marines...we must adapt and overcome.)

I hope that you will forgive my feeling that Steinbeck's work left out an important piece of mankind's puzzle. The catalyst that has always helped mankind to move forward: the hand of the individual man/woman who loves their brothers/sisters.

Let me explain. When my genetic father left us, I was a small child. The government safety net provided food to keep my family from starving. But that is not what enabled me to succeed in life. I owe my success to the generous strangers who offered the scholarship funds that formed the staircase that led to my dreams.

So I reject the premise that government is the solution to all our problems. Government programs are merely a stop-gap. IMO, a better future for mankind can only be reached by individual humans making commitments to other humans.

P.S. Don't bother to comment to tell me I am an idealistic dork. I already know that. ( )

I've never read it before, really great. I thought the ending was going to be some big political showdown, but the novel is about so much more than just migrant workers rights and so on. Sometimes the melodrama was a bit thick (another crazy thing happens, and then ANOTHER crazy thing happens, and then ANOTHER crazy thing happens), but it was never distracting. ( )

I was prepared to compare Steinbeck to Faulkner and Hemingway, because those three tend to get discussed together - but what he really reminds me of is Upton Sinclair. Same powerful expose of the conditions of the poor and exploited, but you know how the problem with The Jungle is that the story itself is pretty awkward? Well, this is better.

So I hadn't realized what a screaming Commie Steinbeck was. That was a fun revelation. And he's sadly prophetic here. He describes how small farmers get pushed out by larger farms, and then the larger farms buy, for example, canneries, and sell their own peaches to their own canneries at under market, to make the profit back with the canned final product, and the smaller farms can't compete and even more of them go under, and eventually there'll be nothing left but huge farms. And that's exactly what happened: nobody stopped it and now it's done.

So I really, really liked this book. I thought the characters were great, the plot grinding. For a while I wondered (back to the Faulk/Hem comparison) whether the writing style was a little simplistic, compared to the very stylized techniques those two used - but then, those self-conscious techniques can get pretty annoying in both cases. In the end it's maybe not so bad to have a guy who can just write a sentence without getting too caught up in doing it either the simplest or most confusing way possible.

(And it's not like the writing is graceless, of course. Just check out the first chapter: we open on a universe of dust that has to be consciously recalling Dickens' description of fog in the opening of Bleak House. Beautiful, bleak stuff.)

Tom Joad is a character for the ages. Steinbeck is leaning on the mythic here: "Whenever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there." but it works because Steinbeck's good enough to make it work. Tom Joad's built for Bruce Springsteen to pick him up 70 years later: Steinbeck is creating a protest, and he succeeds.

And Ma, the unbending matriarch: "'You get your stick, Pa,' she said. 'Times when they's food an' a place to set, then maybe you can use your stick an' keep your skin whole. But you ain't a-doin' your job, either a-thinkin' or a-workin'...you jus' get you a stick now an' you ain't lickin' no woman; you're a-fightin', 'cause I got a stick all laid out too.'" That's some shit right there, huh? That's expressed in foreign terms, but we get the idea.

And check out my favorite character, Ruthie. That's a really sharp, fine, careful character description there, this little girl slowly going feral under circumstances that could take her no other way. It's beautifully done. Check out that allegorical croquet match. It's here where Steinbeck pulls away from Faulkner and Hemingway: Ruthie is a minor character, but Steinbeck draws her perfectly. Hem & Faulk don't have that attention to minor characters: they have more precise narratives. They wouldn't think to include someone who scuttles away and burrows under the story like Ruthie does.

Not sure where all the black folks went - this is almost entirely a white world - but for what it's about, it's got its shit together. Yes to this book and yes to Steinbeck. He's compulsively readable; he's about something useful and important; this is a great book. ( )

Wow. That's just really all I have to say.

...No it isn't. I'm a big fat liar. I have lots to say about this. I just don't really know how. So I'm going to tell a little story, and hopefully that will be enough.

Once upon a time, there was a princess who was the most beautiful princess in the whole world and all the other princesses hated me because--

What? Oh, sorry, wrong story. Just seeing if you were paying attention. You pass. Anyway, real story now... and it go a little sumthin' like this:

Once upon a time, there was a girl who read [b:The Pearl|5308|The Pearl|John Steinbeck|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1309212365s/5308.jpg|195832] and thought that she didn't like John Steinbeck. "Steinbeck?" she said, "Meh."

But then, one of the girl's friends chose a Steinbeck book for a book chain, and the girl read it, and was very surprised to find that she liked it. That book was [b:Travels with Charley: In Search of America|5306|Travels with Charley In Search of America|John Steinbeck|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1309212020s/5306.jpg|1024827]. Now, this girl considers herself to be decently well read, but she tends to choose fiction over non-fiction, simply for the fact that non-fiction can be so dry and boring, so she was very surprised to find Travels engaging and interesting and humorous.

Cut to today, Thanksgiving Day in the US, as the girl in the kitchen prepared The Traditional Feast while listening to a full cast audio production of The Grapes of Wrath... and she found herself moved to tears several times, thinking of the hardships that not only the Joads endured, but so, so many people during the Depression. She thought of the table full of food she would soon set down, and the days worth of leftovers she'd have afterward, and thought of the Joads and their like starving, moving over and over and over, trying, trying, trying to make it... and it broke her heart.

The Grapes of Wrath wowed her, and Steinbeck's portrayal of these sharecroppers-turned-migrant-workers was as real as the food on her table. The style and language were simple but evocative and beautiful in their own way, and the girl knows that complexity doesn't always equal greatness. Honesty and courage and perseverance almost always do, though.

Now, this girl thinks she might just be a little in love with Steinbeck.

Fin. ( )

I couldn't get past how intensely depressing this book was. It felt like the world was bad and just getting worse and worse and worse the longer it went. Plus, I kept getting the intense feeling of thirst, and then hunger, and then thirst--I mean, the writer is good and certainly conveys the sense of place and events, but golly. ( )

I read this for high school English class and have no idea why I have kept it ever since (20 years) because I hated it then and have never been inclined to read it again. I've read and enjoyed other Steinbeck but this bored me to tears. I can still remember thinking "this is going to be a long struggle" when I realised the whole first chapter was about weather. I learned to dread the time of day when I had to read another chapter and was sorely tempted to become an alcoholic at some point during the reading. I understand the themes, and having grown up in a drought-ravaged country where many farmers and their families spend their lives only a breath or two away from depression and suicide I can appreciate the need to tell the stories of people like the Joads but as a novel this is just boring and over-hyped. Perhaps one has to be American to "get" this one. ( )

a poor family migrated from Oklahoma to California during the economic crisis in the thirties it describes the sufferings of the working classes,the injustice and the humiliation and their loss to their land,it tells the story of the American dream ,the tragedy of a simple family who suffer a painful and devastating lfe in order to reach the minimum livelihood,all they wanted was only a home for their family, and to be safe.....


( )

A fine book by Steinbeck, and perhaps his most famous. I prefer East of Eden and Cannery Row, but this is not bad, by any definition. Good ideas which he refines better later. ( )

Best. Book. Ever.

Real, gritty, honest, shameless. This book shows you what life was like for the farm labourers in the great Depression. The ruthlessness of the Capitalist bosses meant that work did not pay for the migrant workers seeking work and grabbing at it whenever they found it. ( )

beautifully written reflection of the era and the hardship facing those in the dust bowl. Every time I read this..i see a little more. Steinbeck writes with a paint brush and words are his canvas. ( )

beautifully written reflection of the era and the hardship facing those in the dust bowl. Every time I read this..i see a little more. Steinbeck writes with a paint brush and words are his canvas. ( )