The Grapes of Wrath

[Pamela_cardenas]

With his book, John Steinbeck is trying to take us into a journey to the bitter reality of the 1930s, during the Great Depression. As thousands of other migrant workers, the Joad family, a poor family of sharecroppers, left their home and went to the West in search of land, jobs, dignity and a hope for a brighter future. But they found a different reality where they were forced into a nomadic existence, found only a place to rest and could barely survive.

Officially, this book has been banned for the use of “vulgar language” and “sexual references”. However, Steinbeck's honest depiction of the political and economic landscape in the 1930s, in which large landowners artificially inflated the cost of goods by destroying surpluses and driving down wages by luring thousands of workers with no rights to California, appears to be the real reason.

Tom demanded, “Why, for God’s sake? Those folks ain’t bothering nobody”.
“I’ll tell why,” Thomas said. “Those folks in the camp are getting used to being treated like humans. When they go back to the squatters’ camps they’ll be hard to handle.”

In my opinion, this book shows us the cruel and hard life during that time, how the richest people took advantage of the weakness of the poor people, and all the social inequalities. This is a part of this country's history and everybody should be allowed to know about it to avoid the same mistakes.

[Ruby]

Great review. I have a question: Does the book only speak of the great depression of 1930's?

The BANKS did it back then and if we compare those events and the people losing everything to the financial institutions with what is going on today, we can see how deep the problem has gone. Steinbeck's solution might have been premature back then but what about today?

[Kelly (Maybedog), Minister of Illicit Reading]

Hi, all,

Great review! I moved this discussion to the classics section because the Book club discussion is for the books we read together.

Kelly