“The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck is not normally a book I would pick based on its description, but I have been trying to familiarize myself with the classics. While this may have been in your high school curriculum, I am so glad I ended up reading it and got to experience it on my own accord.
I won’t lie, I tried to read this over the summer. I kept picking it up, but never got further than the first couple of chapters. They were so long and so descriptive of seemingly nothing it was hard to get into.
I read Of “Mice and Men” by Steinbeck twice throughout schooling. It was one I didn’t expect to like all that much, but was surprised by how much I enjoyed it, even the second time around. Once I finally got into “The Grapes of Wrath”, the later, and much longer, of the two books, I quickly found that this book’s storytelling and characterization were even more amazing and it absolutely deserves all of its acclamation.
The book follows an Oklahoman family traveling across the country to California when their farm is taken over by a new, big, mechanical farm. I realized that the artistic choice in making some of this novel feel drawn out, was because that was their experience. Their journey was exhausting and it was slow.
The thing that first pushed me away from the novel ended up being one of the things that made me feel most connected to the characters and the story.
It made me put a lot of stock in this family and feel for the average Americans who had to struggle on a journey like this because of greedy tycoons and banks. Steinbeck’s characters are powerful to me because it is often the ordinary people who are forgotten in history.
This story does extremely well at not only showing its social commentary through the characters’ lives, but Steinbeck also makes comments that are extremely well put. He shows what happens to a society when wealth disparity is increasing exponentially.
Like how these effects lead to dehumanization, and how it proves the failure of the promised American dream. But also, it can lead to those being affected showing resilience and still obtaining dignity. How, when the powerful few try not to make collective action impossible, it is because there’s great importance in community.
The themes in this book are not lost in today’s world and remain horribly relevant. This book is a thought provoking classic with very strong description and entertaining characterization. If you like knowing your classics, or like western historical fiction and haven’t already, I absolutely recommend picking this book up.