The Grapes of Wrath in Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge

Feb 21, 2010 Talia rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: adult-fiction, bbc-top-100

This story follows the Joad family as they pack up their car and drive from Oklahoma to California, the land of opportunity, where you can pick peaches right off the tree and eat them. When they finally get to California, they are met with extreme poverty and injustice; there’s hardly any work, and for the thousands of workers that have come into the state, the farm owners can “barter down” wages for the workers, preventing any chance of the Joad family earning money. When the work dries up, the ...more

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May 02, 2022 Cheryl rated it it was amazing

Shelves: award-winner, historical-fiction, buddy-read-via-instagram

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Wow. This was a book. I read this as part of a Buddy Read on bookstagram and slowly over a month. This slow read allowed me to really live with these characters awhile. The Joad family and their struggles as they leave the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma and head West to California was heartbreaking but written with such vivid descriptions and excellent dialogue. The dialogue really stands out to me and I’m trying to remember if I felt this way about another book. It’s no surprise to me this book won a Pu Wow. This was a book. I read this as part of a Buddy Read on bookstagram and slowly over a month. This slow read allowed me to really live with these characters awhile. The Joad family and their struggles as they leave the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma and head West to California was heartbreaking but written with such vivid descriptions and excellent dialogue. The dialogue really stands out to me and I’m trying to remember if I felt this way about another book. It’s no surprise to me this book won a Pulitzer.

There is not a lot of hope in this book and it is a devastating read that pulled me under and had me sobbing a couple times towards the end. That ending shocked me and our group. I think a lot of people don’t know what to make of it. And the novel ends quite abruptly, but that didn’t bother me. I cared so deeply for these characters that even if I knew more specifics as to what happened later to the Joads, I’d still always be thinking about them and hoping they survived and got afoot. If one reads more about that famous iconic photo titled Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange, she does survive and go on to raise her family.

Throughout the novel there are sixteen “intercalary chapters.” These “information” chapters serve a very specific purpose in terms of expanding upon important events and providing commentary that supports what happens in the narrative proper. The Joad family does not appear in any of these chapters, but much of the events described in each of those chapters foreshadow their experience. These chapters provide readers with a very generalizes synopsis of the social conditions that affect the main characters, as well as to deliver historical accuracy and commentary on the social and political background of the novel. Apparently some find this to be distracting and said it takes away from the realness of the life and story of the Joads. I did not feel this way and found these chapters were some of my favorite and added to my understanding of the era. I don’t remember learning much at all about this time period in school, and I feel with alot of historical fiction you have to really read up on that historical period, I felt Steinbeck did that in the book for us for the most part. I do want to read more about this time period though and reread Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse which was another 5 star read for me.

The book was a mixture of being immediately lauded and successful but also received criticism because of the portrayal of how those in California so badly treated the migrant workers. It was also seen as socialist. It was publicly banned and burned. According to the New York Times it was the bestselling book the year it was published (1939) and still sells millions of copies. The reasons noted for banning even into the 1980s was because of foul language, sexual content and even abroad in a couple Middle Eastern countries because of “propaganda unfavorable to the state."

There is alot of symbolism I need to spend time unpacking. Apparently there is a lot of biblical symbolism I’m not familiar with, as well as symbolism with animals, blood, birth/new beginning and death. The scene where Uncle John sends the stillborn baby down the River rather than burying it mimics the story of Moses in the Bible. As Moses eventually brings freedom to the slaves - there is hope, as well as Rose of Sharon in her grief nursing an old dying man. ...more

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