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Review: John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
I didn't expect to like this book as much as I liked East of Eden, mostly because the subject matter didn't interest me, and unfortunately I was right. Though I saw a lot of value in the message that Steinbeck wanted to express, this book struggled in keeping my attention. I think I would have preferred to read this book with a class or a book club.
Spoilers.
Story
This was the story of the Joad family that struggled to make ends meet during the Great Depression. Due to the repossession of their farm, the Joad family decided to pack up and move to California where work was apparently plentiful. However, as they made the journey west, it was revealed that the situation was dire as many other families were hoping for work just as they were.
This story became more and more bleak as our characters lost hope. Grampa and Granma died on the journey, Noah and Connie left the family, Tom got into more legal trouble, and Rose of Sharon's baby was stillborn.
The end of the book was an ambiguous but nonetheless bleak one as well. The remaining members of the family were stuck in a flood, and hid with a starving man and his son. Rose of Sharon fed her breastmilk to the man to save him.
But what happens if they live? What if they die? If the family lives, they continue to make ends meet. Is that a fate better than death?
This story was a very heavy commentary on life at the time, and perhaps one of the reasons that I struggled to connect was because I didn't know too much about the Great Depression.
Writing
I have to admit that the use of dialect threw me off a bit and made it difficult for the dialogue to hit with me. But I don't think this is a knock against the book. I think it would have helped the readers from this time period to connect and feel seen through this book. It was just difficult for me to connect because there were certain phrases that perhaps I didn't quite understand and had to read a few times to do so, and by that time, the emotional impact might have lessened.
Characters
There were a lot of characters and frankly speaking I don't think that Steinbeck fleshed them and their relationships a whole lot. Instead, I think they represented different types of mindsets that would have existed at this time.
Granma and Grampa represented the elderly who were close to death, and probably could not hold out enough hope to make the trip. They died when they left their home.
You had characters like Connie who were a bit more individualistic, though it made sense for Connie in this situation as he was not quite a member of the Joad family like the others were.
You had Ma, who was doing what she could to keep all the members of the family alive. That's what moms do, right? She had so many mouths to feed and she couldn't afford to stop and worry.
Wikipedia described Tom and Jim Casy both as somewhat Christ-like figures, and I can see that. Tom was a felon but he always acted with righteousness, in both times he committed murder. He had to leave the family to avoid getting caught and that gave him a martyr-like air. As for Jim Casy, he was a preacher who'd lost his faith, having seen that religion didn't really match with his interpretation of the real world. He later became a representative of a union in California, and was killed because of it, again becoming a martyr-like figure.
Themes
Capitalism
With the Great Depression being the biggest driving force of this novel, Capitalism had to be a big theme. I liked that Steinbeck had conversations spoken between characters that weren't part of the main cast; it gave him an opportunity to talk about ideas that were related to the Great Depression but wouldn't really come up in the Joads' everyday conversations.
Early on in the book, people were discussing how capitalism was an amorphous monster ruining people in agriculture. The worst part of it was that it wasn't a single monster that you could kill. It was a system. You couldn't just grab a gun and end capitalism because it was perpetuated by so many people. Not only the people in the suits but other common folks too, like the guy driving the tractor to till over the repossessed farms, who just wanted to feed his family. You can shoot that guy but another guy wanting to feed his family will replace him.
The concept of ownership was important as well. Farmers argued that those who were born on and raised on land own it. They were the ones who cared for the land. But bankers would buy the land and never set eye or foot on them. Is it fair to say that they own the land? Surely not, in the eyes of the farmers.
Religion
This was a theme that I knew was in the book but I wasn't deep enough into the story to totally understand.
But I think a comparison could be made between the large amounts of migrants travelling west and the slaves leaving Egypt in Exodus. I already mentioned up above that Jim Casy and Tom Joad had a bit of a martyr-like feel to them too.
At the beginning, Jim Casy explained to Tom that he started to not believe his own preachings, that he couldn't believe that something that felt good would be a sin etc.
Prison
When Tom left jail, it was noted that jail was pretty good. They had running electricity, regular meals, access to a library and learning. This sentiment persists today, where some people will find the stability of prison much more kind to them than the outside world, the wild west.
Tom did say that he didn't think prison rehabilitated him though. If he got into the same situation, he would have killed a man again, and he did, when in California.
Maybe it was because jail was so good to him compared to the outside world. Maybe if jail was bad it would be a deterrent. But jail should still be acceptable for living. So what does that say about the life outside of jail was better?
Humanity
There was a discussion during the book about how kindness was not allowed in the world at that time. You couldn't give things to people, you couldn't do charity. If you didn't charge someone for something because you sympathized with their situation, it was against the rule. You couldn't give something to someone if there were legal ownership rules in place. And maybe that was on purpose. So that this world would break up the community that humans had built up over years. At the end of the book, the only thing that the Joads could give the man and his boy were food from their own bodies.
Overall
Definitely a depressing book. The language isn't terribly tragic but the overall message was. It just took taking a step back to really absorb all that happened. I would be interested in reading this book once again with others though. I am a huge huge fan of East of Eden and I could definitely see that Steinbeck was trying to make a point. It was just difficult to connect to the situation.
Spoilers.
Story
This was the story of the Joad family that struggled to make ends meet during the Great Depression. Due to the repossession of their farm, the Joad family decided to pack up and move to California where work was apparently plentiful. However, as they made the journey west, it was revealed that the situation was dire as many other families were hoping for work just as they were.
This story became more and more bleak as our characters lost hope. Grampa and Granma died on the journey, Noah and Connie left the family, Tom got into more legal trouble, and Rose of Sharon's baby was stillborn.
The end of the book was an ambiguous but nonetheless bleak one as well. The remaining members of the family were stuck in a flood, and hid with a starving man and his son. Rose of Sharon fed her breastmilk to the man to save him.
But what happens if they live? What if they die? If the family lives, they continue to make ends meet. Is that a fate better than death?
This story was a very heavy commentary on life at the time, and perhaps one of the reasons that I struggled to connect was because I didn't know too much about the Great Depression.
Writing
I have to admit that the use of dialect threw me off a bit and made it difficult for the dialogue to hit with me. But I don't think this is a knock against the book. I think it would have helped the readers from this time period to connect and feel seen through this book. It was just difficult for me to connect because there were certain phrases that perhaps I didn't quite understand and had to read a few times to do so, and by that time, the emotional impact might have lessened.
Characters
There were a lot of characters and frankly speaking I don't think that Steinbeck fleshed them and their relationships a whole lot. Instead, I think they represented different types of mindsets that would have existed at this time.
Granma and Grampa represented the elderly who were close to death, and probably could not hold out enough hope to make the trip. They died when they left their home.
You had characters like Connie who were a bit more individualistic, though it made sense for Connie in this situation as he was not quite a member of the Joad family like the others were.
You had Ma, who was doing what she could to keep all the members of the family alive. That's what moms do, right? She had so many mouths to feed and she couldn't afford to stop and worry.
Wikipedia described Tom and Jim Casy both as somewhat Christ-like figures, and I can see that. Tom was a felon but he always acted with righteousness, in both times he committed murder. He had to leave the family to avoid getting caught and that gave him a martyr-like air. As for Jim Casy, he was a preacher who'd lost his faith, having seen that religion didn't really match with his interpretation of the real world. He later became a representative of a union in California, and was killed because of it, again becoming a martyr-like figure.
Themes
Capitalism
With the Great Depression being the biggest driving force of this novel, Capitalism had to be a big theme. I liked that Steinbeck had conversations spoken between characters that weren't part of the main cast; it gave him an opportunity to talk about ideas that were related to the Great Depression but wouldn't really come up in the Joads' everyday conversations.
Early on in the book, people were discussing how capitalism was an amorphous monster ruining people in agriculture. The worst part of it was that it wasn't a single monster that you could kill. It was a system. You couldn't just grab a gun and end capitalism because it was perpetuated by so many people. Not only the people in the suits but other common folks too, like the guy driving the tractor to till over the repossessed farms, who just wanted to feed his family. You can shoot that guy but another guy wanting to feed his family will replace him.
The concept of ownership was important as well. Farmers argued that those who were born on and raised on land own it. They were the ones who cared for the land. But bankers would buy the land and never set eye or foot on them. Is it fair to say that they own the land? Surely not, in the eyes of the farmers.
Religion
This was a theme that I knew was in the book but I wasn't deep enough into the story to totally understand.
But I think a comparison could be made between the large amounts of migrants travelling west and the slaves leaving Egypt in Exodus. I already mentioned up above that Jim Casy and Tom Joad had a bit of a martyr-like feel to them too.
At the beginning, Jim Casy explained to Tom that he started to not believe his own preachings, that he couldn't believe that something that felt good would be a sin etc.
Prison
When Tom left jail, it was noted that jail was pretty good. They had running electricity, regular meals, access to a library and learning. This sentiment persists today, where some people will find the stability of prison much more kind to them than the outside world, the wild west.
Tom did say that he didn't think prison rehabilitated him though. If he got into the same situation, he would have killed a man again, and he did, when in California.
Maybe it was because jail was so good to him compared to the outside world. Maybe if jail was bad it would be a deterrent. But jail should still be acceptable for living. So what does that say about the life outside of jail was better?
Humanity
There was a discussion during the book about how kindness was not allowed in the world at that time. You couldn't give things to people, you couldn't do charity. If you didn't charge someone for something because you sympathized with their situation, it was against the rule. You couldn't give something to someone if there were legal ownership rules in place. And maybe that was on purpose. So that this world would break up the community that humans had built up over years. At the end of the book, the only thing that the Joads could give the man and his boy were food from their own bodies.
Overall
Definitely a depressing book. The language isn't terribly tragic but the overall message was. It just took taking a step back to really absorb all that happened. I would be interested in reading this book once again with others though. I am a huge huge fan of East of Eden and I could definitely see that Steinbeck was trying to make a point. It was just difficult to connect to the situation.