The Grapes of Wrath
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Grapes of Wrath
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JD
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rated it 5 stars
Jun 16, 2008 01:45AM
This is the Grapes of Wrath. It needs a discuusion board. Somebody say something.
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What do you want to talk about? How similar Grapes of Wrath is to Victor Hugo's Les Mes? (That is as much of the title that I can spell) or Is the turtle describe in one chapter the same turtle that Tom picks up?
Hell, I don't know. I just feel that such a timeless classic deserves to have its own message board...but yes, I always just assumed it was supposed to be the same turtle. And I can see that there are similarities between Grapes and Les Mis, but I don't think they are too similar. (of course I haven't read the book so I don't know the story too well).
of course it was the same turtle.why would two turtles both be so determined to move West
secondly, does it even matter. The fact is the turtle represents all the tenants that were forced off their property.
please don't get me started i am VERY passionate about this book.
and JD thanks for the "timeless classic" line lol
RyRy*
I liked this book. Didn't have much of a conflict resolution, but that's ok. I liked the writing, the idea, the characters, and the message. What more can you want out of a book?
I have family members (now all dead) who lived through these times in Oklahoma and Texas. Reading this book, which I did not do until I was in my mid 30s, helped me to understand in some way things I remember about them. The Dust Bowl and the Great Depression were powerful and destructive and The Grapes of Wrath captures both the horror and helplessness of people caught up in it - and how it ate away at their pride and dignity.Things that struck me when I read the book that I still think about:
Descriptions of the times when People in the camps were starving and farmers plowed crops under and dumped food in the river to keep prices up. I think things like this still happen today. It's tragic that we've learned nothing from our history.
When the younger Joad brother (have forgotten his name) who has a gift for auto mechanics wants to take a job in a garage and Ma Joad insists he stay with the family and be a farm worker - this just drove me crazy, it was so sad. In the crisis situation the family is in, they cling so tightly to the life and ways they have known. Why don't they realize that this young man could help the family by following his gifts, even if they are different from what Ma and Pa have known? Eventually he runs away from the family - he strikes out on his own to save himself.
I loved this book. It was huge and meaty and altogether wonderful. The ending was perfect. There was no neat and tidy resolution to the Great Depression either. Ending on a moment that combined both tragedy and hope felt just right.
I cursed this book from page one and then closed it and said "That was great." I read it as a 9th grader in a 20th century novel class and was frustrated by the long, descriptive passages of place. I learned more about and the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression from this novel than from anything I read in a history class in high school, college, or beyond. A fanastic book and an argument for continuing with something that is disquieting or just plain boring. The value of some books can't be known until completed. Thanks for this discussion.
One of the most memorable things about this book in my eyes is the "commercial chapter." Right smack dab in the middle of this heart-wrenching story is a chapter about a car dealership. Oddly enough, it worked. My stomach churned. What a way to paint more despair and confusion into a picture. As if the story in itself didn't make us say WTF enough.
Dear ALL.I had this book as part of my curriculum during my graduating years (2005),i am really glad that this book came into my life.
Yes it actually tests the readers patience with the tortoise walking in one direction for many chapters!!! But since we had it for curriculum we were together reading and discussing it.
If you have a really passionate English teacher who can bring this book alive in class,it makes hell of a difference.
And my professor did just that,plus we were expected to write long answers on certain questions....so the imprint of focal message of this book is fossilized in us.
The novel is good reminder about how even in the harshest of inhumane conditions the human spirit still remains aflame!!!!
I believe they even made it into a movie,but they could NOT dare end on the silver screen how the author has in the novel.
All those who wanna read CLASSICS, well here is one.
No, it would have been difficult for them to end the film as it did in the book back in 1940. The times were too different.Yes, it is one of my favorite. The turtle was particularly interesting in that it illustrates Steinbecks own attitude toward destiny.
I just read this book for the first time last month. I never had to read it when I was younger in school and I guess it is one of those book I thought I should. Well let me tell you, this was a GREAT book. I really don't think I would have appreciated it as much then as I do now. I love the way Steinbeck wrote, all those descriptive passages. I think he really made the characters come to life. Such hard times those people lived through - makes me wonder if we were put in the same situation how we would act?
I live in California and my husband is a building contractor, so I can relate to the hard economic times because of what we are going through in our Country today. We are still a lot better off than the Joad Family in so many ways, because we still have food on our table and a house to live in. I appreciate how the Joad Family and a lot of the other families mentioned in the book did not want to be a burden on others. They wanted to find work and pay their way. The way the big farming operations coaxed so many people to come to California from the midwest so they could keep the wages as low as possible was very sad. Greed caused so many problems back then and still does today. One person will just worry about accumulating as much wealth as they can while they stand by and watch another family starve.
Great piece of fiction. One of Steinbecks' best running a close 2nd to his East of Eden.It's hard to pick the best scene in the book as there are many, but the scene with the children looking on while ma fried dough was the most compelling.
Debbie wrote: "Great piece of fiction. One of Steinbecks' best running a close 2nd to his East of Eden.It's hard to pick the best scene in the book as there are many, but the scene with the children looking on ..."
I just had someone in my book club tell me she thinks East of Eden is better than this book, so I will have to check it out. :)
East of Eden is great. Nobody does characters like Steinbeck.
Debbie wrote: "East of Eden is great. Nobody does characters like Steinbeck."I'd probably put East of Eden above Grapes of Wrath as well, for the scope and scale of the work. I find the characterization of both works to be quite good. Still, what may be more compelling about The Grapes of Wrath are not the Joads by themselves, but by the human face of the Joads interspersed with the non-narrative chapters (what my high school sophomore English teacher called the intercalary chapters). These chapters could have stood alone as a separate work, but we wouldn't have been able to make the same kind of connection. It takes the balance of the macroscopic and microscopic views.
I thought Steinbeck balanced the "intercalary chapters" well, helping to paint the scene that we would soon see the Joads interacting in. We first read the car dealership chapter and then we read about Al and Pa having had some of the same moments when they bought their car.I looked for a discussion page for this book because I keep thinking about how Ma took over and started making decisions for the family in a time when the man was supposed to make all the decisions. And Steinbeck doesn't just let this casually happen, he starts out the book explaining who is the head of the family and how the men have meetings and the women listen to see what the men would decide. Then when Ma starts taking over, Tom and Pa both mention it and respond to it and Ma says, when things go back to normal Pa can have his place back as the decision-maker.
It was interesting to me because I've been noticing a similar pattern in life right now where times are economically hard and it's been the women of the relationships who step up and take second jobs and figure out how to make it all work to not lose the house and keep the family fed. I thought that was because times have changed so much that we've done a 180 and men are OK with letting the women be the breadwinners and "wear the pants" etc. But seeing Ma take over made me wonder about human nature, and the natural roles of men and women, as well as about history repeating itself.
I, like so many others, hate-hate-hated this book in high school. I tried to sell it, and a pile of other classics, to a used book store and got offered damn near nothing for them. After they marinated on the book shelf in my room for a few years, I looked at the pile and thought to myself, "What the hay? I'll give 'em another whirl." Grapes was the first one I picked up, and I loved it!First, the premise is very prevalent. Even today. Workers still struggle against big banking and big business, which is forever trying to mechanize itself in the name of efficiency and larger profits. It also speaks to the ongoing struggle of workers' rights. This has become especially relevant in Wisconsin where I live.
I also love the richness of the symbolism. To bring the turtle thing back up, I do believe it was meant to be the same turtle. I read this book with my Dictionary of Symbols (another hold-over from high school) right by my side. Since the turtle can be interpreted as a symbol for the universe/cosmos, there's a nice bit of foreshadowing right near the outset of this book. The Joads were meant to go west. I think it also represents America in this book, as traveling west is symbolic in itself. It signifies a desire for material wealth and fortune. We all know how that went for the US of A in the years to come.
What I liked most about this book was Steinbeck's writing. Reading GoW, especially the odd chapters where he describes the overall situation across the whole country, had a near-Biblical cadence and style to it. It was almost like reading the King James version. He's also extremely efficient. He paints such a clear picture without doing something like taking two pages to describe a friggen tree. He doesn't spend a ton of time "warming his engine" as I've heard it put. I loved this book so much, I went and got Of Mice And Men, and read that in just a couple days. East Of Eden is on my to-read list because of this book too. Someone was looking out for me when I got stiffed at that second-hand bookstore :)
I'm only at the beginning. I just finished reading the chapter where Joad is hitching a ride with the truckdriver. There was such tension in that one chapter, because you weren't sure what was going to happen next...it was fascinating.
It's a fine book, acutely observed, capturing the period, the migration, and - most importantly - the moments. Steinbeck's power seems to come from the pinpoint detail that brings to life such a large scale event. Also in the lack of sentimentality. He lets the human tragedy speak for itself without mawkish and unnecessary literary garnishing.
I taught myself how to make biscuits because of this book. I wanted to be able to make "high browns," as they were described. A lot of people can be fed for not much money, with a batch of high browns. (It was years ago, but I think I've got the right book.)
apparantly opposed to common notion i was not very fond of this book
I read this book about a week and a half ago. I wish that I had read it years before, but then I probably would not have liked it when I was younger, maybe I would.I think that this book suffers, as does To Kill a Mockingbird, from being 'required reading'. I think too often we require our children to read something that we say is a classic and they, being children, really couldn't care less. They have not really been exposed to the harshness of life and can not truly relate to the type of characters in the book. What child who has this as a set book in their English class has ever truly been hungry?
I loved this book. It shows the destruction of a whole way of life and the vultures that preyed upon the victims of the Dust Bowl. Personally I think that this should be 'required reading' for all Heads of State and their cabinet ministers.
I loved this book when it was required reading in high school and when we watched the movie it became obvious I was about the only one who actually read it, funny thing is, I don't remember being annoyed at the detailed description but I guess I was just coming off of reading the C.S. Lewis books. Tim mentioned To Kill a Mockingbird, my fave of all times! I recently got two of my kids to read that one by reading the first two chapters to them and refusing to read more! I think this is what I will do for The Grapes of Wrath.
Great book. One of the best. I'm actually planning to review it soon, but it's been a while since I read it, so I might have to re-read some chapters to expand on my views in the review.But for now, I think a few of you guys are misreading the symbolism of the turtle.
I wouldn't read too much into which "Direction" it was going.
For me, the symbolism of the turtle been run over, and getting up, despite all the difficulty had a rather simple symbolic meaning: Poor people don't give up, working class people don't give up, heck, people don't give up.
The Joads and many other "Okies" didn't give up. They just keep pushing forward....onwards and onwards despite every obstacle they came across.
When I finished The Grapes Of Wrath a couple of years back I was reminded of Doctor Manhatten's "Nothing Ever Ends" comment from Alan Moore's groundbreaking Watchmen graphic novel.
Tim wrote: "I read this book about a week and a half ago. I wish that I had read it years before, but then I probably would not have liked it when I was younger, maybe I would.I think that this book suffers,..."
I think that because these books are required reading, unfortunately, they can turn kids off from reading all together.
I did not read this as required reading. I read this because of an interest in reading "classics" which may have coloured my reaction anyway. Regardless, I disliked this book. I felt the characters were exceedingly one-dimensional and served to fulfill symbols, rather than as characters who grow and evolve. The end was memorable - that might be the most positive thing I can say about this overlong, overwritten structurally messy novel. I'm not saying I hated the novel; certainly I can appreciate its impact and reverberations throughout American literature. I'm also not saying I hated it because it's cool to hate the great. Far from it. Grapes of Wrath works as a Biblical or didactic parable rather than as a story - that to me is its inherent failing.
This is probably the only novel that I have read TWICE. Each time I find some gem of meaning that I had missed before. The dustbowl and its tragic aftermath have always fascinated me,especially the human ability to keep going, keep fighting in the face of absolute desparation. Not only did they continue to fight to survive, but these people had a certain dignity in the way that they met adversity. Life, birth and death are lived out in these pages and this telling is probably a reasonable mirror of the times during the Great Depression and the dustbowl years.
I hated this book. I, like Matthew above, can fully appreicate the novel's impact and reverberations throught American literature and American History, but I still hated the book. It's not so much the subject matter as it is Steinbeck's writing style. I just find him overly detailed. At points in the story he'd expend so much time describing something that I'd have to go back to the beginning of the description just to remind myself what it was he was describing. For me, this over-attention to detail just bogged the book down and made what should have been an immensely moving and interesting book a complete bore. It was simply 600+ pages of monotony.
When reading this book I found myself getting more and more disgusted with the charchters mainly his brothers and how they abandoned their family at the worst possible times. I can see why they decided to end the movie differently
The Grapes of Wrath, although depicting the depression creates a depression for the reader too. The book was full of dreary, mean times for folks. My folks would tell of the depression, but it's funny, they managed to find humorous things too to talk about. Stienbeck was a genius in painting a picture for us with words, too wordy a lot. Too much of a downer. But it is a classic and for good reason, he brought to life a time that was bad for our country and how people coped. He did so with a lot of drama and too much gloom. When times are hard a lot of people survive from their sense of humor. I think it's a case of being overly dramatic. Because it is the positive that keeps man going no matter what. And there are good things that happen when times are bad, like how the family does come together to help each other and how neighbors help. I prefer not to read books that have absolutely no sense of humor.
There was a Dorothea Lange exhibit at the hilltop Getty Museum. I was uncomfortable thinking about those photos in such a lavish setting, but a friend was anxious to see them. Gazing at "Migrant Mother" were two very well dressed women. Woman one, "What do you suppose she used on her face for sun protection ?" Woman two, "Oh, probably olive oil." Woman one "All I know is I can't play tennis for one minute without sun protection."I had to go outside and do some deep breathing.
The divide was and is so huge between the haves and the have nots. Not much to laugh about.
Well, maybe I come from some strange people, but there was always something to laugh about too. My mother took the depression seriously, not having shoes to wear to school, but she became determined to better herself and did. Life does not always deal us a winning hand, but it is up to us how we face it. The depression was hard and like all the pioneers that came before them, it was hard back then too. But a good sense of humor could get you through a lot. There were a lot of things people didn't have. But the majority of people didn't have them. But it sure made them appreciate what they did. Sometimes we all need a dose of that, it's where respect, dignity, courage, and yes even a sense of humor can get you through a lot of hard times. But the Grapes of Wrath was a depressing book and showed very little of anything positive. I didn't care for the book or the movie, too depressing, too bleak. My grandmother lived through it and she had it very rough. My mother had it rough too, but dwelling on just the bleakness of it, didn't help anyone. Stienbeck painted a black picture of a time when people did come together, and those people learned a important lesson in life, and were better for it. If people lost that much today, I'm not sure they could tolerate it.
Jonathan wrote: "I guess Steinbeck resisted the urge to tell the same old story about the little guy coming out okay in the end in spite of the enormity of the forces arrayed against him. The novel's end is so hope..."Jon--
I actually found the end of the novel to be incredibly hopeful. Considering that the book was banned for 'the act of perversion' (as the law said) in the end, for Rose breaking that cultural taboo, I think, shows that the sharing of her milk with the nameless old man is a strong act of humanity that rarely exists in a world where poverty is criminalized and both the haves and have-nots are dehumanized in the power conflicts.
Joanne wrote: "There was a Dorothea Lange exhibit at the hilltop Getty Museum. I was uncomfortable thinking about those photos in such a lavish setting, but a friend was anxious to see them. Gazing at "Migrant Mo..."The Denver Post has some great color photographs on line from the 1939-1943 period from across America. For me, they call to mind "The Grapes of Wrath". Very powerful.
http://extras.denverpost.com/archive/...
Patrice wrote: "I think that act is a symbol of charity in a lot of paintings."
It's often considered a reference to Michelangelo's Pieta, but that's not a definitive binary representation.
It's often considered a reference to Michelangelo's Pieta, but that's not a definitive binary representation.
Fantastic photos John, thanks for posting the link.
In several parts of GOW, there is mention that California was the ideal land of milk and honey. By the last act of the novel, it brings round that idea with a notation that the milk came from "the people" and was there all along.
Thanks for the link, John. Those are great photographs.
John - These photos are incredible. The color makes these experiences feel very contemporary. Given the relevance of the themes in GOW to certain modern economic concerns, this is very fitting. I read the book today for the first time and found it hard to read. Not my favorite book by any means, but important and thought provoking.
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