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22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Terrific "Fambly", April 26, 2007
If you have not read this book, what are you waiting for? Is it because it was written before you were born? (1939) Does its name scare you, as it did me, into imagining it would be about all sorts of odd things, as I did? Well don't let your preconceived notions fool you. It's a terrific novel. It is a great piece of literature that won Mr. Steinbeck a well-deserved Pulitzer Prize, and eventually, with his other contributions to literature, earned him a Nobel Prize.
What can I say about the Joads that has not already been said in the past sixty-odd years? How could I have missed knowing them earlier? I read this story, with its "country speech" and "country ways" and wanted to take them all in. I wanted to comfort them all. I didn't know what I would find at the Joads when we first meet Tom going home. Who is this Tom Joad Jr. and why was he in jail? He must have had a HORRIBLE life to end up there, he must have. Then you meet the 'fambly.' You live with the 'fambly.' You see proud Pa try so hard to be the head of the home during the Dust Bowl migration. This family, who for generations upon generations, upon generations lived off their land. The land wasn't a piece of property, it was family. It fed them, it housed them. They raised a crop to sell, so they can pay off the loans they took when times were tough before. When the rains stopped coming, and the payments to the bank stopped being made, the 'banks' came and told all these people to leave. Imagine someone coming to tell you that the land you have lived on all your life, the land of your fathers and grandfathers belonged to the banks and you had to leave right now. Imagine the dread. All your life spent in the same place, with the same neighbors, the same strong values; "Yes Sir! Yes Ma'am!" No talking back, everyone knew their place. And then the dust came, and took away everything you knew.
The Joads sell everything they own, load up a beat-up truck with the necessities (food, water, mattresses, clothes, pots, pans) and head towards the promised land of California. Along with 500,000 other displaced people. All looking for land to work; it's all they know. You get land, you work it, it's yours. They had no idea what life outside of Oklahoma was really going to be like.
There's Ma, trying so hard to keep the family strong. She's the backbone. She eventually takes charge, which, back on their farm, was unheard of. Times were changing.
Ma & Pa, 6 kids, Grandma & Grandpa, Uncle John, the Preacher Casey, and Connie, the husband of one of Ma's daughters. Thirteen people in one truck.
I wanted to bring them home, let them eat, give them a hot bath, tell them it'll be ok. I wanted to simultaneously smack the heck out of Rose of Sharon (Rosasharn) and comfort her in the end; tell her she really did do good in God's eyes at that very last paragraph. I saw Ruthie grow in those 7 or 8 months into someone I did not like. She was mean, she was vindictive, she was 7. I saw humanity at its worse. Things like this really did happen in the early 1930's, after the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. These "Okies" were treated with contempt. They were kicked off their lands, treated like animals, paid meager wages or in some cases, they were paid with a loaf of bread for 16 hours of work, and it's disgusting. How would you fare? What would you be willing to do to feed your starving family?
It's a terrific book. I wish I knew how Noah fared. I wish I knew what happened to that spineless Connie. Is Tom ok? Did he take up the cause that Casey so tragically and instantaneously had taken from him? I imagine so. I imagine Tom forcing these cities who spurned them, who burned them out, who arrested them, to have to accept them; 500,000 strong. If not directly, then inspiring others to go on and on. The packing plants who throw away food, while these people sit outside the gates dying. The orange growers who sprayed kerosene on the overstock of oranges rather than give them away for free. The food thrown in rivers, with armed guards making sure no one took the food. Pigs slaughtered because they could not sell them, and hungry people staring, not understanding that there's a profit to be made.
"And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listening to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quicklime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is a failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage."
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Sweetest Grapes I've Ever Known, March 19, 2009
I am a John Steinbeck lover for sure. In this wonderful depiction of the horrors the Oklahoma farmers faced during the great dustbowl of the 1930's, I was once again awakened to what a story is supposed to be about. Too often, we are zapped with this wild tales of one explosion after another, with characters so much bigger than life that they would need the whole universe to survive in. Here, we see the intimate interactions of those who must struggle to survive in a hostile environment. We even see those little devilish schemes certain characters assume in order to be human. (The preacher is the perfect example.) I was mesmerized by the wonderful way the great novelist paints the mannerisms of each of his characters.
The story evolves in a slow and natural way, blazing a trail through the perils the Joad family faces on their journey to California, where hope drives them and keeps them sane. And even when they complete this trials, other, more severe setbacks are waiting for them in ambush. It is a story of struggles and greed, of honesty and deceit. The story finds its way into the deepest chasms of your heart and then tears out a piece.
I recommend reading other Steinbeck books first, to savor the best for last.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A book with a message that still holds true, March 5, 2009
It wasn't that this had some exciting story that kept the reader glued to the pages. No shocking climax (although there are a number of shocking events portrayed throughout), no personified villian... none of that.
The Grapes of Wrath is phenomenal not for the unforgetable cross-country trek of the Joad family in the post-depression years, but for the essence of humanity which Steinbeck so perfectly captures in every chapter. Steinbeck demonstrates how people who are just barely getting by on what they have sometimes have more to give to their fellow man than the wealthiest citizens our society has to offer. He draws a vivid picture of struggle during hard times for the most disenfanchized Americans, yet shows the emotional side of poverty and disolutionment, and reveals how genuin humanity can often be most prevalent amidst the most inhumane of living conditions.
It has been said that Steinbeck had a socialist agenda when he came out with The Grapes of Wrath, but I couldn't disagree more with that assessment. Steinbeck isn't so much jabbing at a political/economic injustice in this novel as he is striking at the lack of humanity that can be brought about when business efficiency and profitability are thought to trump human decency.
As I write this review the American financial system is once again in peril, and themes from Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath are suddenly becoming more meaningful than they had been when I read this book in high school. I am amazed at how true and applicable Steinbecks points still ring today, and I recomend this book to anyone who hasn't read it in years or who has yet to read it for the first time.
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