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The Grapes of Wrath

The Grapes of Wrath

List Price: $49.95
Your Price: $31.47
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Changing your life
Review: Every epoch or so a book comes along that gives you a painful insight into the nature of man in the face of suffering and the most abject of circumstance. "The Grapes of Wrath" is one of those books.

The book exemplifies in each moment, between its powerful essays interlaced in an intense story of survival and compassion in the face of the greatest adversity. Steinbeck defines the greatest elements of man, defining the vital passion that separates him from his bestial predecessors. And he demonsrates his brilliance and the insurmountable power of his diction by containing all the power and suffering that man must overcome in life with the mere description of a turtle crossing the road.

I'm am a lover of novels, perpetually immersing myself in books. But of them all, this shines as my favorite novel, and has changed my life in a way that I cannot describe.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A novel that really takes you there!
Review: I chose to read The Grapes of Wrath as part of my English coursework and found it a truly amazing book. The imagery was so powerful, it actually feels like you are there with the Joads, sharing their trials and tribulations. I reccommend this book to everybody, please do not reject it as too long or too descriptive; if read carefully, you will find that it is all part of Steinbeck's effect of creating the reality of the awful treatment of the Joads and the plight of the migrants of Oklahoma. (If anybody shares my view, them please e-mail me with your ideas as I need to make a collation of information for my coursework -thanks!)

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: It's worth it.
Review: I recently read this book, being forced to do so by my college level English course. I can clearly see from this work the reasons why Steinbeck eventually received a Nobel Prize. His syntax is creative, clear, understandable for those with less progressed vocabularies, but intriging enough for those with greater knowledge to remain intrested. However, this ending is quite vulgar, but, if taken on another level, it shows how Rose of Sharon grown. The end also leaves the audience guessing what happens next.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: What is it like to starve to death?
Review: Here is a book about a family living in the most desperate of conditions. In fact, as the book proceeds, you come to realise that not only has this family lost its land - its home and livelihood for generations - but that they are also in danger of losing their lives, to of all things, starvation.

Today, with our Western economies booming, low unemployment, improving standards of living, most of us desperate to lose weight rather than gain it, it's easy to take for granted the simple things in life: a roof over your head, enough food to eat, running hot and cold water, the respect and friendship of your fellow countrymen, the health of yourself and your family.

What most impressed me about this 58-year-old book is that it made me understand something of what it must have been like for those people that made the terribly hard journey to California. I understood their dreams of finding a new home, new friends, new jobs, new life. I understood their fears as news started to filter through that things might not be so wonderful in the new world after all, that the future was increasingly uncertain. I understood their desperation as their loved ones began to leave or die, and their hunger began to grow.

As the book proceeded, I grew to feel that these characters - Tom, the Preacher, Ma, Pa, Rose of Sharon, Winfield, etc. were real people, people I wanted to overcome the terrible treatment they received, to succeed, to survive.

It shocked me that such horrors could have occurred just 60 years ago in the wealthiest country on the planet. Surely, if it can happen in America, it can happen anywhere. We know that many people in Africa and Asia still live in such squalor. Perhaps similar deprevations are now being inflicted upon the Russian people.

Solzhenitsyn's "A day in the life of Ivan Denisovich" gives a moving account of a man living for his next meal in a prison camp. However, it is all the more shocking when you see a whole family living (or dying) this way.

The ending of "The Grapes of Wrath" provides a shocking image, even by today's cynical and graphic standards. Even now, over a month since I finished reading the book, I cannot shake this image from my head. Perhaps that is the best tribute I can pay it: even after all these years, it's a book that still has the power to shock.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Some comments on the Grapes of Wrath
Review: This book was pretty good, but I think it could have laid back on the details. Overall, though, I think it was an O.K. book. I recommed it for high- school readers.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A detailed and emotional account of the Dust Bowl experience
Review: Overall, the novel was a very informative account of the historical aspect of the 1930s. It gaveinsight into one family's struggles as they packed up all they owned and moved west. Although the ending was very meaningful, it left you hanging. You never really find out whether the Joads survive.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best book that I have read, and I have read millions !
Review: I started reading novels at the age of fifteen. I read "The Grapes of Wrath" when I was seventeen. I am now forty two, and God knows how many books I have read to date. Yet, twenty five years after I first read it, if I were to be asked which is the best book that I ever read, I will have to say that this was it. The book just blew me away. I confess that I barely remember anything of its characters now. Tom and Rose Joad are a distant memory. Yet the magic lingers on. The book lies in my cupboard, but I am scared of reading it again, lest the magic may not be recreated. I will probably never read it again.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Dust Bowl Decency, Not Insanity
Review: I have to say, it was a decent book. But, it wasn't the insanity I had hoped for. I was looking for pure, 100%, Dust Bowl action, but it wasn't there. All in all, an average work with a good ending.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Historical masterpiece, fictional sensation
Review: The Grapes of Wrath is a wonderful combination of great fiction and descriptive history. Steinbeck, by following the Joads from Oklahoma to California shows not only their way of dealing with the Great Depression, but also how many other people dealt with the time of the dustbowl. This is a must read for anyone who values American history or great works of fiction.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: I believe that The Grapes of Wrath way over rated.
Review: The Grapes of Wrath is 619 pages of complete boredom. I am reading this over the summer for my 10th grade English class that I soon will be attending on an everyday basis once school starts. In my opinion this book is too wordy and boring. They could take this 619 page book and cut it down to about 150 pages if they wanted to. I believe that no high school student should suffer the extreme pain and boredom of reading this book. My advice to any high school student who has to read this book is get it on audio tape and fast forward through most of it you wont miss much, only a bunch of useless dialogue!


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