Grapes of Wrath

Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck
ISBN: 0 14 02.4775 0
Publisher: Oxford Press

OVERVIEW: This is a work of literature that personifies the plight of dust-bowl farmers set off in search of 'the good land'. Read it as a charming story of a Oklahoma farming family, a series of striking examples of exploitation, or to gain insight on he lives of those caught in the Great Depression or just because you like a good tale; Whatever your reason, just read it! This is a heartwarming, disturbing and insightful book. Winner of the 1940 Pulizter Prize, this book still sells 100,000 copies per year (ref). Having read Elmud's Thead titled same, I was shocked that no one had written up this outstanding book. At about 450 paperback pages it's not terribly long and; for the most part, quite readable. Using 'creative spelling' to accentuate our "oakees" way of speaking you'll also get a flavor of how language influenced everyday life.

PRO'S:

• Classic Steinbeck descriptions of people and places; very alive
  
• Moving Plot: From packin up da house to movin to cali - not just a 'talking' book
  
• Telling: Overtones on racial, ethical, cultural and especially economic norms abound
  
• Moving; Various events in this book are likely to wet an eye or two
  
• For the Crusaders: How economic conditions can drastically change people's views, behaviors and sources of dignity
  

CON'S:

• I had a little trouble getting used to Okee-Speak; after getting its phonetic-dance down, I started again and am glad I did.
  
• I wish it'd have been longer. Of the total thickness of the paperback I purchased, almost one-half is made up of reviews, commentaries, editorials and the like
  

HIGHLIGHTS:

• Plowing bank-purchased bankrupt dust bowl farms over (pp38)
  
• Possessions and Lives Abandoned or Uprooted (pp89)
  
• Earthen connection, symbiosis of the farmer (pp117)
  
• Culture shock having taken to the road (pp156)
  
• Granma's Dead (pp228)
  
• First experience: The Shower (pp307)
  
• Destroy old crops before the Migrant workers eat them (pp349)
  
• Birth and life; starving in a box car (pp453)
  

NOTABLE QUOTES:
[INDENT] Sharecroppers evicted, repossessed and consolidated farms; enter the Tractor Man:[INDENT]"So easy that the wonder goes out of work, so efficient that the wonder goes out of the land and the working of it, and with the wonder the deep understanding and the relation. And in the tractor man there grows the contempt that comes only to a stranger who has little understanding and no relation. For nitrates are not the land, nor phosphates and the length of fiber in the cotton is not the land. Carbon is not a man, nor salt nor water nor calcium. He is all these, but he is much more, much more; and the land is so much more than its analysis. That man who is more than his chemistry, walking on the earth, turning his plow point for a stone, dropping his handles to slide over an outcropping, kneeling in the earth to eat his lunch; that man who is more than his elements knows the land that is more than its analysis".
[/INDENT][/INDENT][INDENT]On the road, wondering at the rich folk whizzin by[INDENT]"The big cars on the highway. Languid, heat-raddled ladies, small nucleuses about whom revolve a thousand accouterments: creams, ointments to grease themselves, coloring matter in phials - black, pink, red, white, green, silver - to change the color of hair, eyes, lips, nails, brows, lashes, lids. Oils, seeds, and pills to make the bowels move. A bag of bottles, syringes, pills, powders, fluids, jellies to make their sexual intercourse safe, odorless, and unproductive. And this apart from clothes. What a hell of a nuisance!"
[/INDENT][/INDENT]MY RATING:9.2