El raïm de la ira

by John Ernst Steinbeck

Paperback, 1993

Status

Available

Call number

077

Description

El raïm de la ira (títol original en anglès The Grapes of Wrath) és una novel·la de John Steinbeck publicada l'any 1939 que li va suposar el Premi Pulitzer. Narra la història d'uns temporers d'Oklahoma durant la Gran depressió i de com s'enfronten a les dures condicions econòmiques que els obliguen a immigrar a Califòrnia. El seu títol ve de la primera estrofa del conegut himne de la Guerra Civil dels Estats Units, The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

Description

"Traces the migration of an Oklahoma Dust Bowl family to California and their subsequent hardships as migrant farm workers."--Amazon.com.

Genres

Collection

Can Vinyes

Publication

Edicions 62 (1993), Edition: 001, 544 pages

Media reviews

The Guardian

Seventy years after The Grapes of Wrath was published, its themes – corporate greed, joblessness – are back with a vengeance. ... The peaks of one's adolescent reading can prove troughs in late middle age. Life moves on; not all books do. But 50 years later, The Grapes of Wrath seems as savage

as ever, and richer for my greater awareness of what Steinbeck did with the Oklahoma dialect and with his characters.

Show Less

— 1 more

Kirkus Reviews

This is the sort of book that stirs one so deeply that it is almost impossible to attempt to convey the impression it leaves. It is the story of today's Exodus, of America's great trek, as the hordes of dispossessed tenant farmers from the dust bowl turn their hopes to the promised land of

California's fertile valleys. The story of one family, with the "hangers-on" that the great heart of extreme poverty sometimes collects, but in that story is symbolized the saga of a movement in which society is before the bar. What an indictment of a system — what an indictment of want and poverty in the land of plenty! There is flash after flash of unforgettable pictures, sharply etched with that restraint and power of pen that singles Steinbeck out from all his contemporaries. There is anger here, but it is a deep and disciplined passion, of a man who speaks out of the mind and heart of his knowledge of a people.

Show Less

User reviews

LibraryThing member jnwelch

"The concrete highway was edged with a mat of tangled, broken, dry grass, and the grass heads were heavy with oat beards to catch on a dog's coat, and foxtails to tangle in a horse's fetlocks, and clover burrs to fasten in sheep's wool; sleeping life waiting to be spread and dispersed, every seed

armed with an appliance of dispersal, twisting darts and parachutes for the wind, little spears and balls of tiny thorns, and all waiting for animals and for the wind, for a man's trouser cuff or the hem of a woman's skirt, all passive but armed with appliances of activity, still, but each possessed of the anlage of movement."

What a poet Steinbeck is! But what does anlage mean?

1. Biology The initial clustering of embryonic cells from which a part or an organ develops; primordium.
2. A genetic predisposition to a given trait or personality characteristic.
3. A fundamental principle; the foundation for a future development.

All three will come into play in this story. The Joads and others in Oklahoma don't want to move, don't want to change, but in the Great Depression, dispossessed of their farms, they have no choice. Handbills promising work in California entice thousands to take to the highway, Route 66, and migrate west. Stoic and determined, the Okies (a derogatory term out West), sell all they can, and pile high on old cars what they'll need for the journey and their new life. This much most people know without having read the book.

What they may not know is the beauty of Steinbeck's writing, and how drawn into the Joads' lives the reader becomes. Ma Joad is the key to all of it - "from her great and humble position in the family she had taken dignity and a clean calm beauty." She "seemed to realize that if she swayed the family shook, and if she ever deeply wavered or despaired the family would fall, the family will to function would be gone." That realization is sorely tested at times, and its truth shines through in what was, for me, a jaw-dropping ending.

Tom Joad the son is a passionate man, and a visionary, who incisively understands one problem after another and how to effectively address it. His integrity is unassailable; the difficulty he faces is keeping himself from losing his temper and striking out at the greedy oppressors and powerdrunk false authorities. His closest traveling companion is the ex-preacher Casey, who once used his exaltatory power to seduce, and now wants only to fully understand humanity and spirit without the trappings of religion. His eulogy for a deceased old man is filled with honesty rather than homilies. "I woudn' pray for an ol' fella that's dead. He's awright. He's got a job to do, but it's all laid out for 'im an' there's on'y one way to do it. . . . if I was to pray, it'd be for folks who that don' know which way to turn." And for all the salmon-like drive west to generate new lives, there are a lot of folks who end up needing that prayer.

All of the characters in this story are convincingly drawn, and the depictions of their ordeals vivid. When I grew up I used to read, and hear people ask, Who is going to write the Great American Novel? That came to mind several times during The Grapes of Wrath and I thought, I'm reading it.

Anlage of movement. There's the clustering of embryonic cells in a young woman's stressful pregnancy that symbolizes the new birth sought at the end of their travels. The Joads (and others) have genetic predispositions to prevail somehow, and to help others no matter how little there is to be shared. Finally, there's a fundamental drive to build in California a foundation for the family's future. Along the way we experience the dirt, the hunger, the passion, the inequities, bodies giving out, the will to survive, the enormous challenge of finding work and the next meal. This is an epic book, filled not with gods, but with people we know, or wish we did, or wish we didn't.

Show Less

24 more

LibraryThing member Smiler69

Steinbeck's Pulitzer Award-winning book tells the heartbreaking story of the Joads, a fictional family of displaced farmers from Oklahoma, forced out of their homes because of years of bad crops in an area ravaged by the dust bowls of the 1930's. The Joads set out on the road in a jalopy packed to

the brim with the few belongings they will need while they make their way to California, where there is a promise of plenty of jobs and prosperity.

In this social commentary, Steinbeck alternates between the narration of the Joads' progress, and vignettes describing the realities and hardships which directly affected approximately half a million Americans who sought to better their lives of destitution and near-starvation, prompted by advertisements which promised plenty of work picking the ripe harvests in California. The 'Oakies', the term then used to describe these desperate people, were despised by their fellow countrymen because of their extreme poverty and forced vagrancy, but Steinbeck squarely places the blame on big business and the drive for profit at all cost, which was the reason why the farmers were first driven off their lands and then kept in a cycle of poverty they had very little hope of getting out of. The novel received much critical acclaim and was widely read when it was published in 1939, and Steinbeck was later awarded the Novel Prize largely because of it. But not surprisingly, he was also harshly criticized and labeled as a 'Red sympathizer' by those very same people he condemned in the novel.

This novel is now among my all-time favourites. This was my second reading of it and I found it satisfying on more levels than I can describe, and will no doubt read it again and again.

Show Less

LibraryThing member ChelleBearss

I find it very hard to believe that this novel was first published over 70 years ago as some of the main topics, like unions and labor disputes, are still affecting people today. Steinbeck took real life occurrences and turned them into a masterful novel about survival and strength.

Tom Joad and his

family have lost their land during the depression and Oklahoma Dustbowl and have decided to migrate to California for work after seeing a handbill advertising the need for fruit pickers. Unfortunately they are not the only family with this idea and the highways are packed with thousands or hundreds of thousands of people trying to find a better life.

After heartbreak on the road the family arrives in California and they quickly realize that it won't be as easy as they had thought. With thousands of workers applying for every open position it becomes very hard to find work. When they do find work the wages are well below what they should be because the farmers know that for every worker that wants 30 cents an hour there is a man with a starving family that will work for 20 cents so he can bring home some food that day.

This book will pull your heart strings in one paragraph and make you angry in the next. Steinbeck does a great job of taking you on the journey with the Joads and you can feel their pain and their happiness. The joy they feel when they see the California valley or when they find a government camp with working toilets and running hot water. The heartbreak and pain they feel when a member dies or when there is not enough to eat. You can be proud at the strength they hold and how they take care of each other, even in their weakest states. This is a novel that will stay with me for much longer than the time it took to read it.

"Rich fellas come up an' they die, an' their kids ain't no good an' they die out. But we keep a'comin'. We're the people that live. They can't wipe us out; they can't lick us. We'll go on forever, Pa, 'cause we're the people."

Show Less

LibraryThing member Fourpawz2

This Great Depression-era novel was virtually unknown to me before this; I knew of its existence, of course, but never even thought of reading it before.

There isn’t much of a background of Great Depression suffering in my family; one grandfather had a government job and the other worked as a

handyman for his mother, keeping all of her real estate properties fixed up. So, while no one was living high, wide and handsome, certainly nobody was suffering like the Joad family was, either.

It is one of those stories where people go from bad to worse and worse still. Somehow the core members of the family kept going on, even though it was hard to see how they were going to make it. A number of characters in the book are rather weak and confused by the way their world has come unglued, but fortunately for them, both Ma Joad and her son, the ex-convict, Tom, are made of sterling stuff and though they never are able to find a really good situation for the family, they keep their heads and manage to move the rest of the family along, keeping them from wallowing fatally and forever in the latest catastrophe to hit the family.

I found Steinbeck most powerful in the chapters that did not deal with the Joad story directly – the ones where he spoke of how things were – chapters that had a clear non-fiction cast to them. It was very easy to see how the Unions came to be; they had to come into being, or else who knows what kind of awful things might have happened – revolution, mass starvation and other things too horrible to think about. The only thing I wonder about is how the Unions have come to be in the sorry condition that they are in the present time. I wonder, as I have for some time, if they will ever recover and after reading this book, I have to think that they have to or else things might slip backward.

The end of the book did seem a little disjointed to me – as if Steinbeck did not know exactly how to end it. For me, that last scene with Rose of Sharon and the starving man was of the – “What?! Where the hell did that come from?” variety. But perhaps it has some great ‘significance’ that I missed. However, I suspect that even if it did have some great meaning that I did not get, I still would not have liked it very well.

Still, over all, a very good book and one I should have read a long, long time ago.

Show Less

LibraryThing member santhony

I’m fifty years old, I’ve read literally thousands of books, and I’m not aware that I’ve ever read a novel written by John Steinbeck. Recognizing this deficiency, I ordered a Steinbeck collection, seven of his most celebrated works including The Grapes of Wrath. I vaguely recall seeing the

film starring Henry Fonda, and am well aware of the plot and the historical backdrop, but nothing can take the place of reading the work itself.

As most know, the book details the westward migration of the Joad family, as they are uprooted from their Oklahoma homestead by the evils of the Great Depression, the Oklahoma dust bowl and the advent of mechanized farming. The family harbors visions of milk and honey awaiting their arrival in California, or so they are assured by the numerous handbills promising plentiful work and bountiful riches. What await them instead are rapacious labor recruiters, unfriendly natives and slow but sure starvation.

Steinbeck certainly succeeds in painting a vivid and stark picture of the hopelessness faced by the migrants. His chapters alternate between “big picture” overviews and the particular heartbreaks and hazards faced by the Joads in particular. The story is an education in economics, labor relations, politics and human nature. In this day and age, it is difficult to conceive of children literally starving to death in the shadow of the most productive agricultural land in the country, much of it lying fallow and off limits to those that were capable of growing the food to nourish their own families.

This is a very powerful novel, both with regard to the emotions that it taps and the beliefs and conceptions that one holds. It provides a sharp contrast between a period when so many were desperate to work for as little as something to eat, to one in which so many demand so much without having to lift a finger. There must be a happy medium.

Show Less

LibraryThing member jayne_charles

This was an astonishingly gripping account of the plight of migrant workers during the depression. I could feel the hunger of the children hanging around the stew bowl, waiting to eat the left-overs. The desperation of the family as they moved from one camp to another in search of work was

heartbreaking. I didn't really 'get' the ending which was bizarre, but apparently the author was determined to have it that way. I haven't really got on with Steinbeck's other works but this was absolutely spot on.

Show Less

LibraryThing member Hantsuki

I probably could not write a review at this point that will do this book justice, but I would like to touch on a few brief points that tend to bother critics about this book. The Grapes of Wrath is a very much intimate novel that draws you in just as the sentimental novel Uncle Tom's Cabin does. As

a matter of fact, while I was reading it, as audacious as it sounds, I felt like Steinbeck was sitting right next to me telling me himself about the issues he was concerned about during the Great Depression. I do believe this is why some people may not appreciate the book as much as I do; not everyone wants to captivated by all of the emotions in the novel, and I get that, but I think that's one of the reasons why this novel was so astounding.

Even though some people felt that the ending came too suddenly, Steinbeck argued that he had the ending in mind the whole time he was writing which would make sense. Steinbeck wanted people to know how it felt to be one of the dispossessed - a stranger in your homeland where food and land are a plenty yet you have no permission to have any of it. When the Joads have finally reached the end of the novel, they are left in destitution yet they still have the humanity to help complete strangers out because those are the kind of people they are. Thus, the ending didn't just come out of the blue, but the Joads stayed in character throughout the whole novel while of course one character experienced a significant transformation in the end. What that transformation is, I'll leave you to find out for yourself.

Show Less

LibraryThing member sarah-e

It was high school required reading. I was on a three day weekend vacation with my parents, and I sat in a window seat in a little cabin we had rented - it was raining - and I read this straight through. I especially liked the non-Joad family chapters that described the migrants movements and

struggle as a whole. It spoke to me. A definite re-read for the future, and most highly recommended to anyone.

Show Less

LibraryThing member CareBear36

I had to read this book for a class in high school. At first, like any immature reader, all I could think was, "This is so boring," "I hate this book," "Nothing is happening." But before I knew it, the book was over and I was left with a feeling in my heart that I had never felt before. Somewhere

along the journey from the first page to the last, I had gotten to know the characters, fallen in love with them, and actually cared about them. The last scene in the novel is a powerful one that left me breathless. This was an amazing read. While at first it may seem dull to some, stick with in, because by the end you will see what a masterpiece Steinbeck created.

Show Less

LibraryThing member BeeQuiet

The Grapes of Wrath opens with thick descriptions of the Dust Bowl of America, interwoven metaphors alongside descriptions of the folk attempting to make a living and keep a sense self there, alongside loving descriptions of the very earth itself. It is only after drawing the reader to empathise

with the small landowners, with the families, with the Joad family in particular and their way of life and their way of relating to other people, that the slow-burning horror of the situation comes to a head and forces them off their land. It is Steinbeck's notion of pace - not pushing too quickly but allowing the reader to fall in love with the land as though they themselves were the cultivators striving to keep unbroken that chain of succession, that feeling of belonging to the land as it belongs to them, which makes this book a 'classic'. The Joads must flee, escaping hunger and seeking a new place to call a home in sunny California, known to them from glossy magazines showing white painted houses and ripe oranges. As history tells us, that is not what these desperate migrants found.

This story is not just about one family, it is about all families who were driven from their land in the Dust Bowl leading to and during the Great Depression. Steinbeck dips into the wider arc of the story, using short chapters dotted between the tale of the Joads to show that their story was indeed the story of all. The Grapes of Wrath is many things, it is a political tract, it is a deep examination of the concept of the American family of that time, it is an explanation of economics, it is a lush description of the Dust Bowl and of California, it is a crushing indictment of the state's response to a humanitarian crisis. Riding high through these messages are those speaking of the power of humanity to push through crisis; of the ability of folk to pull together, the poor helping the poor.

Today, it is often difficult to view the Great Depression as anything other than a historical event like any other children learn of in school. However reading the papers, catching the news, looking at the situation faced by many people around the world and indeed in America, we can see that The Grapes of Wrath is still vital. This is not just a snapshot of one time lost forever, the danger faced by families unable to support themselves due to the push of big business is ever present. Here is a book that can teach us lessons, make us laugh, and make us cry.

Show Less

LibraryThing member yourotherleft

In The Grapes of Wrath Steinbeck tells the story of one family, the Joads, who have been evicted from their dry Oklahoma land during the Great Depression and have been forced to choose to migrate to California where there are supposedly jobs for the taking in a veritable land of milk and honey.

Steinbeck introduces us to the Joads as they hopefully make ready to travel the width of the country in a cobbled together jalopy with what little money they were able to get from selling off most of their belongings. In dialogue rich with realistic dialect, we come to know Tom, recently paroled from prison for killing a man; his Pa, a man nearly beaten down from his circumstances; Ma, a woman with an iron will who will stop at nothing to keep her family from falling apart; his sister pregnant Rose of Sharon whose husband is full of dreams for their future; and Uncle John who has spent a lifetime trying to face or escape his imagined sin. Through the pages, readers come to an intimate knowledge of the family as they head west helping who they can though they are struggling to make it themselves. It's perhaps because readers come to know and love the family in all its strengths and its failings that makes The Grapes of Wrath a difficult read to swallow.

There is absolutely no subtlety nor any particular artfulness to be found in the Joads' story. Never for a moment do readers need to wonder where Steinbeck stands on the events that are taking place. Steinbeck is more than eager to hammer his points home as he preachily derides the corporate farmers whose tractors and hired hands eliminate the connection between men and the land that sustains them. He flays California landowners whose vast fields of hardy crops do nothing for the migrants starving for lack of work. He paints heavy handed pictures of people starving in Hoovervilles even while farmers discard crops to to maintain prices.

If, indeed, there is art in Steinbeck's American classic, it lives in the alternating chapters where Steinbeck interrupts his telling of the Joads' journey, to generalize the very much shared experience of the thousands of migrants who fled to California during the Depression. In them, he captures the haggling for a junk car, the staggering number of people heading west fed only on dreams, the growing anger of powerless men, the etiquette of camping, and even the dances that give struggling families a break, however brief, from their sufferings. In these chapters, Steinbeck lets the many voices be heard, he paints pictures with dialogue, and his words even carry the very rhythm of the dance.

There are many things to like and to dislike about The Grapes of Wrath. It is preachy, heavy handed, depressing, frustrating, perhaps even exaggerated, but it is also a profound, and perhaps even hopeful story, of a family's strength in the face of unbelievable struggle. Steinbeck's writing gives poetry to populism, and even now, The Grapes of Wrath has the enduring power to cause the righteous anger that can bring about change that so much of society still desperately needs.

Show Less

LibraryThing member kremsa

My favorite book ever!

LibraryThing member fothpaul

A very moving piece of work which is very well structured. The great depression in America is a topic which I didn’t know very much about. The story of the Joad family’s journey across to California to find work is one of survival and determination.

Steinbeck captures the desperation and

despair of the situation perfectly and I felt really dragged into the hopelessness the characters experienced. It’s extremely difficult to imagine what people went through at this time, but reading this book has made me think about it quite a lot.

The main story of the characters is interspersed with more poetic observations on the time by the author. These help break up the story and helped to reiterate that this was a situation which affected more than just one family.

I found the manipulation of the desperate migrants by the large corporations to be quite disturbing, a sad reflection upon the human capacity for greed without thinking of the consequences. This is nicely counterbalanced by the generosity of the migrants towards one another, sharing food and helping each other out. Their generosity is even more pronounced as they are living hand to mouth and have little to spare. There are many lessons which can be taken from reading this book and they still apply to the present day.

I will definitely be looking into the authors catalogue as the writing style and content of the book were superb. The book is not sweetness and light, but it does have a lot to say on human spirit and compassion.

Show Less

LibraryThing member endersreads

I think that given our economy, and Donald Trump's statement that "The coming depression will make the last one look like a Sunday picnic", has gotten many people interested in Steinbeck's little jewel here. It's very, very good! I blazed through it, unable to put it down. I came away shocked at

how well American history had been hidden from me--for good reason--over 7 Million Humans STARVED while produce was doused with gasoline, animals slaughtered, limed and buried--all to rot while humans starved. Why? Because no profit could be made! The monster has returned today, in 2008. I have a few questions I would like answered, well many actually, but a few concerning this here story... What happened to Tom? Did he go off to revolutionize (Tom should represent us, the readers--perpetual revolution--Trotsky told us too)? What happened to the Joads and Uncle John? I suspect they starved. Where the hell did Connie get to? I doubt he starved, bastard--probably became a deputy. The ending was bizarre and left me with strange mental images of Rose of Sharon. Like Muley, in this society I'm just like a damn ol' graveyard ghos'. I am extremely proud of these early American people--we are losing them and they won't be replaced.

Show Less

LibraryThing member ocgreg34

"The Grapes of Wrath" follows the Joad family, long-time farmers from Oklahoma, forced to leave their beloved patch of earth due to drought and the Great Depression. Banks foreclose on the land, sell it to big businesses who push the families out. Like many other families in the state, the Joads

hear of jobs out West, in California -- fields of cotton and orchards of peaches, ripe and waiting for the picking. The family gathers together -- Ma and Pa, Granma and Grampa, Uncle John, Noah, the pregnant Rosasharn and her husband Connie, little Ruthie and Winfield, and the recently-paroled Tom Joad -- and fills a beat up truck with their lives and heads West. Along the way, they battle against hunger, death, and the desert, eventually making it to the Golden State of California, only to find their lives are going to be much worse.

The novel provides a fantastic glimpse into what life was like during the Great Depression, especially in California. Those incoming migrants, toting large families while looking for any kind of work, created a fear within the locals -- fear of them organizing, fear of them becoming just like the other Californians. They did whatever they could to keep families like the Joads -- the Okies -- at poverty level. Steinbeck didn't rely simply on the story of the Joads themselves, but interspersed chapters showing what was happening to everyone. They struck me as a Greek chorus of sorts, focusing on the generic while watching those stories play out among the Joads and the people they meet on the way across country.

It truly is an amazing novel. I only wish I hadn't waited so long to read it.

Show Less

LibraryThing member WilliamMichaelian

I fully recognize that what I say about this great novel won’t amount to a hill of beans compared with the many erudite, perceptive, and occasionally dull things that have already been said about it. But I feel that if I don’t say something, I will be a criminal haunted by his own silence and

laziness. The Grapes of Wrath is such an important book that I feel I must, at the very least, tell people who haven’t read it that they simply can’t afford to put it off any longer. The perspective gained will help them understand the corporate arrogance and corrupt politics that create and profit by the world’s problems, as well as the harsh and increasingly violent economic reality faced by growing numbers in the United States and abroad.

The Grapes of Wrath is a history lesson, a call for justice, and a literary achievement all in one. It is an eloquent poem of the downtrodden, who are unable to speak for themselves. It is an epic journey filled with hardship, sorrow, and strife miraculously illuminated by human decency, kindness, and hope. It is also a warning against complacency, and a reminder that quite often what is assumed to be a right has been built upon the misfortune of others and the cruelties they have endured.

Steinbeck accomplishes all of this by telling the story of the Joad family of Oklahoma, tenant farmers compelled to leave their Dust Bowl home by economic forces too great for them to resist. In so doing, they become part of a westward migration made up of thousands of uprooted families lured by the promise of agricultural work in bountiful California. To their horror, they are met with hatred and mistrust, and soon discover that work is nearly impossible to find, and that when it is found, it doesn’t last and isn’t enough to live on. And so the Joads find themselves faced with a great paradox: that of starving in a land of plenty. Caught up in the battle between Labor, Big Money, and increasing mechanization, the Joads and other migrant families are used as strike-breakers one day, only to have their meager wages cut in half the next. As soon as a given crop is harvested, they are kicked out of their subhuman accommodations and told to move on under threat of violence. Roadside camps are burned; scapegoats are picked at random and labeled as communist troublemakers. The hungry migrants are seen not as fellow Americans down on their luck, but as a filthy, inferior race that threatens to infect the native population.

This novel is a classic example of a personal story set against a giant backdrop of events. As such, it is impossible to read it without putting oneself in the time and place of Ma Joad, as she clings to her pride while giving strength and encouragement to her family as it grows angry and resentful with hunger and threatens to unravel, or her son, Tom, who is so outraged by the way his people are treated that he decides he must somehow learn to champion their cause. Thanks to Steinbeck’s realistic presentation, after spending some time with the Joads, the reader sees the food on his plate — if he is lucky enough to have food at all — in a completely different light.

A great part of Steinbeck’s success comes from his use of everyday language and dialect. The story isn’t told in a detached or elevated manner, but in an earthy way that is a natural outcome of the subject matter. Some reviewers at the time thought the use of dialect was foolish or contrived — the same criticism once leveled at Mark Twain. Having heard the dialect as a kid in Central California myself, it is my feeling that Steinbeck would have killed his book by sanitizing it. Through talk, he established a sense of immediacy and familiarity. The Joads were real people, and their predicament was as real as the Depression era that spawned it.

Also not to be overlooked is the book’s humor. This is something else Steinbeck understood: the roots of laughter are nourished by hardship and sorrow; humor, like song and dance, is an expression of pride and survival.

Finally, though I hope it isn’t necessary, I want to offer one last reason to read The Grapes of Wrath, and that is Steinbeck’s triumphantly sad and beautiful ending. If the end of this book — both in terms of its final pages and its final paragraph — doesn’t change the way you look at things, then perhaps nothing will.

Show Less

LibraryThing member weakley

This has been the best book this year for me. Easily 5 stars. I loved everything about it, and the subject matter rang so true. It really reminded me of listening to the stories my grandfather told about working for the railway in the thirties. Not the specifics but certainly the feel.

The shorter

vignette style chapters that seperated the main body of the story was a brilliant device for back story and narration. It really kept the whole thing together. I also loved the balanced ( I felt ) explanation of the economic troubles and labour difficulties.

Through 90% of the novel I felt Tom Joad was the main character, and then in the last 10 pages I changed my mind. For me Ma became the main character. She was the head of the family in every way at the end. Everyone followed her lead. Awesome book...very glad I read it.

Show Less

LibraryThing member Clif

This is a classic which needs to be read by those who want to be well informed about American literature and history. It's interesting to note how this book is an accepted part of American culture today, but in its time it was very controversial. It is my understanding that Steinbeck's home town of

Salinas, CA held organized book burnings of Grapes of Wrath during the 1930's. Today the City has a museum that honors his memory. How times change! Or do they? The haunting reality is that the story describes things that are very similar to what is happening today with undocumented immigrants. Perhaps a new Grapes of Wrath needs to be written that can inspire some new book burnings and ultimately change our country.

Read April 2007

Show Less

LibraryThing member AshRyan

Steinbeck wrote some good novels, some that are even almost great (East of Eden comes to mind); this, however, is not one of them. The Grapes of Wrath is little more than bad communist propaganda.

It isn't that the kinds of things he describes didn't happen, but the way he presents them---without

looking for the deeper cause (rather than pulling out the tired old scarecrow of "greed", an abused and vague term anyway) or offering a real solution but rather simply pushing for a (dubious at best) political program---is not only unrealistic, it isn't artistic either. About the only time it approaches the level of genuine literary expression is when Casy goes on about how his idea of holy is for every man to be shackled, not even to every other man, but to Mankind as a whole. That's a horrible thought, but at least it's a somewhat deeper one.

Even Tom Joad's famous "Whenever you seen a cop beatin' a guy..." speech is all about the insignificance of the individual, and as if to prove his point, Steinbeck continues the story for quite a while after that but Tom (despite having been the main character up to that point) does not reappear.

And stylistically, this is one of Steinbeck's worst...it could be described as faux-Hemingway---lots of awkward sentences, unnecessary repetitions of words rather than using pronouns, etc. But it actually reads more like Socialist realism than anything else. It has a lot in common with some stuff put out by the Union of Soviet Writers under Stalin around that time. East of Eden is much better written, though Steinbeck is still using some techniques he seems to have learned from writers like Kataev.

I did a bit of research after finishing this, and it looks like Steinbeck actually joined and had further involvement with the League of American Writers, which was set up by the Communist Party USA in 1935 in sympathy with the Union of Soviet Writers putting its policy of controlling and censoring the output of authors into effect the year before. Anyway, enough was known here about what was going on under the Soviet system by the time he wrote The Grapes of Wrath that he couldn't have had any honest excuse for glorifying it like that.

I suspect that the only reason The Grapes of Wrath is considered such a great classic is that it was heavily pushed by the press which was highly sympathetic to communism in this country at the time of its release, and because of the movie version with Henry Fonda. People like to pretend that Steinbeck wrote books like this for "the common man", but the truth is it's incredibly patronizing and condescending; he really wrote it for wealthy intellectuals like himself to feel better about themselves. As someone who's in the working class himself (but doesn't intend to stay there his whole life), I think if I ever met Steinbeck I would have slapped his face, because The Grapes of Wrath is basically a slap in mine.

Show Less

LibraryThing member AustereAdam

Summary:
Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath is an intense, harrowing account of one family’s struggle to survive, after being dislocated from their Oklahoma ranch and forced to move to California – land of prosperity- for work. The Joad family and their local (former) preacher, Jim Casey get

caught up in the web of agricultural monopolies & Hoovervilles. They bounce from farm to farm, job to job, and camp to camp, as they search for enough work just to feed themselves. The story ends on a note of acceptance and understanding, but without promise or hope. The reality of the Great Depression and the dust bowl devastated “Oakies” seems to settle over the entire novel, the entire country, without so much as a glimmer of better days to come – though the Joads are sure to keep on.

The Good:
Steinbeck’s use of language and scene as emotion is absolutely brilliant. His description makes the moments – and there are many intensely moving moments. He also breaks up the storyline with chapters interspersed that tell almost like a news reel. There will be a chapter, for instance, on the life of a cotton picker, what a man can expect to be paid, how he struggles to feed his family off it, how the pickers are forced to fight over bolls and weigh down their bags with rocks for extra pay; how the scales are tipped in the farmers’ favor and how arguments ensue which are for the benefit of pride, but never truly resolve anything. Then, in the next chapter, Steinbeck brings his reader back to the Joad family and their personal struggle. The reader finds the Joads in the midst of situations described in the former chapter – only this time the impact is more intense, because we know this family – we are rooting for this family, but we already know, we have the facts, that this family is doomed to fail. Still, Steinbeck forces us to cheer them on and to believe, like the Joads believe, that everything will turn in their favor sooner or later. The format – the style and language- make this novel read like a play or a movie, as something almost watched rather than read. Steinbeck’s close, personal relationship with California is also an asset to the tale; he knows these peoples’ destitution and pain; he knows the land and what it does to people, how it promises wealth and easy-living, then turns on those emigrants who have come to reap the land’s riches. Steinbeck touches on this in many of his novels – East of Eden, for instance, but nowhere else is the land such an active character, such an antagonist to the Joads success – and to the success of all the “Reds.” Still, these folks love the land, and will continue to work for just a small space of their own; so we too love the land. Finally, Steinbeck is clearly speaking out in preference of the Union. Casey and Tom Joad – likely the novel’s two most conscientious and laudable protagonists – both, in the end, come to the conclusion to “organize.” They believe it is the only way to get ahead, to get out of the slums and to earn a living for the people and their families. At a time when Unions were being demonized by big and small corporations alike, Steinbeck was courageous –and right- in his championing of them.

The Bad:
The only negative I see in The Grapes of Wrath is the lack of resolution. What happens to Connie, for instance, or to Noah? They disappear – walk away from the Joad family and are never heard from again. Are we to believe that they made it, or that they perished? Jim Casy, when he chose to take the fall and was driven away from the Joad family, letter returns as a hero – so, in contrast, we can assume that the two deserters met a less heroic fate? Tom Joad, too, the novel’s main character – in close race with Ma Joad- disappears at the end. We get a sense of where he’s going, but we never know if he succeeds. Finally, the story of the Joads themselves, or at least those Joads whom are left, is also left unresolved. Just when things start looking up for this family – when a little money has come in, when the family is fed and food is not wanted – all luck turns, and everything is washed away. The Joads are flooded out of their camp, lose their truck and their reserves. Rosa Sharon loses even more than this and yet we see her giving care to another in the last moments of the novel, a “mysterious smile” on her face. Steinbeck leaves a lot to the imagination which, in a six hundred page novel, seems unnecessary. My interpretation would be this: the Joads will never make it, but they will never give up trying. This seems to be the reason for Rosa Sharon’s smile – like Mona Lisa’s. Sad, resigned, but alive.

The Final Verdict: 5.0 out of 5.0
Not since Melville’s The Confidence Man and Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn have I felt an author has so completely and implicitly captured the American spirit. The only faults to find in this novel were that too much, though not much really, was left unresolved. Why doesn’t this reduced my overall score for the novel? Because Steinbeck knew the problem itself was unresolved – yes, characters in this novel wandered off and were never heard from again; so it was with the migrant laborers, split from their families to find work, with promises to strike it big and return with wealth and advantages. The language and dialogue were masterfully wrought, and the novel’s structure is something unique and wonderful. The interspersed chapters of detached observation give the readers a clearer understanding of what is really happening, and the realization that, left with only the Joad family’s journey, we too would continue to be hopeful when there was no reason left to be positive. It is no wonder that The Grapes of Wrath is considered by some, such as Dorothy Parker, to be “the greatest American novel.”

Show Less

LibraryThing member aamirq

It took me two attempts to get past the first 20 pages of the book. But when I did get past and finished the book, I knew that I had read just about the best book ever written.

LibraryThing member Rconerly

I officially habve a NEW favorite book.

Not because I love a happy ending or fanfare, but because I love to EXPERIENCE what I'm reading through the authors' words. Our TV's today may be 3-D, but this book was a 4, maybe even 5, -D experience. It is so well-written I shivvered with cold as they

sloshed through water, drenched and hungry; and my heart warmed with tales of home and dreams of what could be. This book opened my eyes to a side of the industrial revolution that I'd never before seen; and terrorized me with the realization that it doesn't take much for neighbor to turn on neighbor, given the right circumstances. This book was the kind of book that taught me how to be a better person, and forced me to apprecite the "Fambly," food, and roof over my head I so often take for granted.

I'm a better person after reading this book.

This book is very real. Like life, it doesn't have a happy ending, tied up in a perfect little box. As life does, the story continues, but the narration ends. I am so grateful to LibraryThing and the 1001 Books to read before you die for encouraging me to read this book and grow. Steinbeck is a GENIUS!!!!!

Show Less

LibraryThing member dele2451

Could I get a sixth star please? Not just a magnificent read, but a truly important one.

LibraryThing member KurtWombat

Growing up in a California still in the after-glow of 60's idealism, I saw the world as a place always moving forward, getting better. By the mid seventies I began to realize that society often takes as many steps back as forward. And that moving means making sure we all move forward together. Then

I read The Grapes of Wrath which beautifully puts the arc of human, social, and political experiences upon wonderful display. Gradually expanding the experience of the Joad family from the intimate to communal living and how we really all depend on each other. From it's ending, I have carried hope forward. Fantastic!

Show Less

LibraryThing member benuathanasia

To me, this seems to be Steinbeck's generation's response to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. If you liked that, you'll like this. If you like this, you'll like that. Both have a depressing yet realistic pulling back of the veil on the American Dream that I think my generation can really empathize

with. We've been fed this beautiful lie and get to watch as it falls to pieces around us, destroyed by the very people who promised it to us.

Show Less

Fewer