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Summary: What You Should Know Before Starting
Review: You know it's an American classic, and everything that has been written about it being a great book that depicts an era in American history in a phenomenal way is true. I will just point out two things that I think the person who reads this book should know (especially if the reader is anything like me):1. The book starts out sort of slow. I read the beginning and wondered what I had gotten myself into. In fact, it started out so slow that I would have put it down had it not been required reading. I urge you to keep reading! The book is a classic for a reason, and it is good. Eventually, it turns into a real page-turner, and you want to find out what happens next to the Joad family. Later, you will want to check out what other people have said about this book. I never would have gotten all of the Biblical allusions or other symbolism without reading and discussing this book with others. 2. The ending will surprise you. It shocked me. I definitely won't spoil it, but the ending of this book left me, quite literally, jaw wide open. WHAT? I thought. Oh my gosh! I was glad I had someone to talk about it with, because even in today's world, I'm sure most people would find it shocking. And it is nothing like the movie. That's my two cents. This book is a great addition to your literary knowledge, and if you haven't read it, I highly recommend it, from both the literary angle and the historical perspective.
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Summary: An amazing book
Review: I read this book when I was 12 and I loved it! It's interesting to see how the people of the Great Depresion lived through things. John Steinbeck is a great author and I think he deserved the nobel prize. After reading this book of his, I'm also going to read 'Of Mice and Men' and 'East of Eden'. I'm sure they'll be as wonderful as 'The Grapes of Wrath'. This is probably my favorite Pulitzer, read it!!!!
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Summary: EVERYONE Should Read This Book
Review: We just read 'The Grapes of Wrath' in my AP Language & Composition class and I loved it. My teacher recommended that we purchase a copy of the book so that we could make notes in the margins. I went all the way and bought this lovely Centennial Edition... and then I couldn't bear to write in it! I recommend this book to any and all people, while recommending this particular edition to true fans. It would make a great gift to a lover of great literature and/or John Steibeck himself.
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Summary: a Great Book
Review: The Grapes of Wrath was written by John Steinbeck. It basically describes the tragedy of the Oklahoma sandstorms. The first section of the book is nothing more than a very detailed chapter, describing the sandstorms and the lives of the people living in Oklahoma at this period of time. Steinbeck does a great job at describing the miserable life of these people. I thought this was an essential part of the book because it set the mood of the book. It showed the reader, right away, what was going on in the world, and how horrible it was, before he gets into the characters of the story.
During this horrible time, a family decides to leave Oklahoma like every other family was. They decide to travel to California in search for some fortune from the Gold Rush. Their trip is very long and harsh. They all travel across the country with a carriage and a couple of horses. They experience a lot of hardships on their journey. Close to the end of their trip a family member dies because of a disease in their foot. When the family finally gets to California they are expecting an easy life and they are expecting happiness but all they find is more poverty, like in Oklahoma. Nothing was different.
This is the part of the book when I finally realized the family's pain. I finally started to feel really bad for them. This is a huge reason why I loved this book. Towards the end of the book I had serious feelings for the characters. It amazed me.
The Grapes of Wrath doesn't have a very complex plot. It actually doesn't have much of a plot at all. It simply follows a family through a period of their life.
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Summary: History critic
Review: The historical part of this book is very disturbing. Things like the bulldozer going across the open plains plowing everything under was very difficult to understand from the point of view of the individual families, but from the banks view it was the only way to turn a profit or break even in the hard financial times of the Great Depression. The author also puts in the small things that add a sense of verisimilitude to the story, examples like the prices of the fruit and cotton, and the wages the pickers got for their work.
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Summary: The Grapes of Wrath-Western Lit. p.1
Review: The Grapes of Wrath is a compelling novel dealing with the many hardships the Joad family undergoes while struggling to survive during the depression. John Steinbeck takes the readers on an emotional roller coaster as each chapter introduces new twists and turns hooking the reader and bringing them in. Throughout their endeavors the characters seem to transform and take on new roles; whether it be a desperate man trying to forget the past, live in the present and move into the future, a hopeless reverend striving to find meaning and holiness in life or a husband coping with failure and the fact that he cannot support let alone take care of his family without the strength and guidance of his wife. The Grapes of wrath focuses on family ties and humanities need of relationships and companionship.
The novel is centered around one of the themes concentrated on this semester; the person's fear of loneliness as well as inability to be content with solitude and constant need of interaction and new relationships with that of other persons. This theme is very evident throughout the novel from the very beginning with the quickly evolving comradeship of Tom Joad and "Reverend" Jim Casey. The men find each other in the desolate and barren environment, which at one point had been a thriving community. Each man is in search of something; for Tom it is his home and family that he has been away from for four years and in Casey's case he is on a spiritual endeavor in the hope of finding holiness and renewing his faith. The two men find comfort and consolation with their camaraderie. The theme repeatedly presents itself in various situations for instance: the relationship the Joad's family forms with the Wilson's while venturing to California in hope of a promising new beginning, the effort of uniting the migrant workers against the intolerable working conditions they are forced to cope with initiated by Casey and finished by Tom Joad, and the last scene in the book in which Rose of Sharon saves the life of a man starving to death with her own breast milk. The Grapes of Wrath is an incredible as well as realistic tale of the ability to mend a desperate soul with the love and solidarity of another.
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Summary: Growing heavy for the vintage...
Review: Nestled between the parched earth of the Oklahoma country and the flooded fields of the California valley lies a tale so stark that its own nakedness adorns it like the most precious jewel. The story is narrated in the rustic tongues of the Joad family and the poetic maelstrom of the author's conscience; the guileless, earthy wisdom of country folks and the refined, high-flying ideology of Steinbeck. I don't recall being more moved by any other piece of literature ever. The younger Tom Joad is easily one of the finest characters I've read. There is no magic attributed to Tom or his family and the author does not ask you to suspend reality anywhere in the novel. If anything, the reality is so overwhelming that I often found myself breaking in-between and taking a few minutes off to unwind. The book is written with excruciatingly detailed observations like "Joad took the bottle from him (Casy, the preacher), and in politeness did not wipe the neck with his sleeve before he drank"! To write something like that, a person would have to have powers of perception that transcend sight or sound. We've read so many times of vague emotions; unidentifiable joys, unnamed pains, inexplicable kinship and intuitive distrust. With Steinbeck, there is no ambiguity. It is, as is. Every alternating chapter details the journey of the Joads while the ones in between are the author's discourse on the larger issue of human depravity of which the sufferings of the Joad family are but the most nominal instance. My favourite such chapter in the entire novel was Chapter 25. To quote, "The Spring is beautiful in California. Valleys in which the fruit blossoms are fragrant pink and white waters in a shallow sea. Then the first tendrils of the grapes, swelling from the old, gnarled vines, cascade down to cover the trunks. The full green hills are round and soft as breasts"... The author proceeds to describe in the most tender and in the most fascinated of terms, the luscious growth of fruits and vegetables and flowers and the men who work to create this marvel of plenty. He sings paeans to their ingenuity and slowly trundles through to the ripening and maturing of this plentiful produce and suddenly we find ourselves facing the most abhorrent of truths. In the face of exploitation and refusal to pay the wages for this harvest to be reaped, Steinbeck wreaks his vengeance on this paradisical beauty so elegantly painted in his lyrical prose. He commands the birds and the wasps and the flies to feast on the decaying, stinking, putrefying apparition left in the aftermath of his destructive force. His weapon, his mighty pen. Truly, no sword could obliterate with such completeness. "Men who can graft the trees and make the seeds fertile and big can find no way to let the hungry people eat their produce. Men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby their fruits may be eaten. And the failure hangs over the State like a great sorrow." Steinbeck has had his revenge. It does little to comfort him. "There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success." I shook when I was done reading this chapter. I am no Communist, not even quite a Socialist. But this book is one of the finest examples of how high the human mind can fly, how far and wide it can see, how unflinchingly it can comprehend and how limitlessly it can feel. I consider myself most fortunate to have read this book. Read it.
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Summary: The Significance in the Grapes of Wrath
Review: I thought that the most significant thing in this book was when Tom was telling his mother about what Casy had said to him. Casy had said that, "a fella ain't got a soul of his own, but only a piece of a big one." I think that this is significant because after Tom says this he then says that he wants to stay around and try to help the small farm farmers. In some way or another we are all connected like it says in the book, we need other people and they need us.
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Summary: Steinbeck's best
Review: Better than the Bible, this one by Steinbeck is the best book ever, period.
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Summary: In the view of a boy from Oklahoma.
Review: I can remember the brown clouds rising up and sweeping over our home, even in Oklahoma City in the early 1950's. And the stories from my parents and grandparents who stayed in Oklahoma through the depression, and the stories from my grandmother who moved to California looking for work, but it wasn't until 1967 when I was in the Navy in San Diego situations would inspire me to read this book. Even today in California, being called an "Okie" is not a compliment. It is said with a derogatory note of disdain akin to so many other predjudicial nicknames, and you really don't feel the entire impact unless one is directed at you. What was this about? Why was there such an attitude towards people from Oklahoma? A friend told me I would find the answers in this book. It was in reading this book I lost my naivete about the depth of human prejudice and callousness. It was this book that inspired me to participate in civil rights demonstrations when the Navy transfered me to Mississipi. It was this book that woke me up! I will always be grateful to Steinbeck for the skill to tell a story such as this, and I can only hope it's message will endure through all time.
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