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The Grapes of Wrath (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)
by John Steinbeck
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| MSL Pointer Review:
A towering masterpiece, this famous protest novel is written from the very depths of the author's heart. |
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Author: John Steinbeck
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Pub. in: March, 2006
ISBN: 0143039431
Pages: 544
Measurements: 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.9 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00432
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- Awards & Credential -
The 1940 Pulitzer Prize Winner from the Nobel Prize winning author. |
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- MSL Picks -
Interpretation of great American literature usually requires some perspective...indeed one must have lived a large portion of life to fully appreciate it's hardships. This philosophy is never more evident than when considering John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. At once a testament to human fortitude while also a study for the historian to obtain a more humanistic perspective on the Great Depression, Steinbeck achieves a sort of literary pantheon with this timeless classic.
This is the story of the everyday mid-western crop farmer during the great "dust-bowl" tragedy of the Depression. Forced by economic and personal factors to disband their farms and land (leaving generations of family history behind), they head to California to start anew with the promise of economic stability. Alas, this notion is soon discovered to be false as life there becomes even more destitute than the one that they have just left. Steinbeck's fictitious Joad family most assuredly mirrors the many similar groups that actually made this treck across a suddenly barren mid-western United States. Hardships and sorrows accrue as their savings run out and the promise of work becomes an ever lengthening ideal. Steinbeck presents a tome that emphatically enforces this personal sorrow while maintaining a fast paced novel thats unique in literary circles. Historical accuracy is never compromised as Steinbeck keeps the State and Federal governments' skewed Depression Era's economic policies at the forefront of the story and shows how these mis-guided actions indirectly become the driver for Franklin Roosevelts "New Deal" policies.
The overriding virtue of this work, however, is Steinbeck's ability to take the reader along and make him a part of the story. Time and again, I truly felt the compelling sadness and overwhelming desperation of the Joads plight and when this is coupled with the incredible "readability" of the story, one can see why this work has long been considered "the great American novel". Having half-heartedly read this in high-school, I'd submit that it should be re-read by those who now have families and responsibilities...a new appreciation will most assuredly be gained and we give this our highest recommendation.
For Chinese readers, the scenes may seem familiar. The story reminds us of the hundreds and thousands of migrant workers rushing into the factory floors of the huge Guangdong manufacturing powerhouse, where millions of “Made in China” products from electronics to furniture, from toys to cookware, are being churned out everyday and shipped to every corner of the world. But the purported paradise of Guangdong turned out to be only sweathouse for many of them, especially girls from inland China. Reading The Grapes Of Wrath or watching the movie, we can identify the heartbreaking human suffering, the Joads’ plight, despair and destruction.
Target readers:
General readers
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No writer is more quintessentially American than John Steinbeck. Born in 1902 in Salinas, California, Steinbeck attended Stanford University before working at a series of mostly blue-collar jobs and embarking on his literary career. Profoundly committed to social progress, he used his writing to raise issues of labor exploitation and the plight of the common man, penning some of the greatest American novels of the twentieth century and winning such prestigious awards as the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. He received the Nobel Prize in 1962, "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception." Today, more than thirty years after his death, he remains one of America's greatest writers and cultural figures.
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From the Publisher:
One of the greatest and most socially significant novels of the twentieth century, Steinbeck's controversial masterpiece indelibly captured America during the Great Depression through the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads. Intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, tragic but ultimately stirring in its insistence on human dignity, The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is not only a landmark American novel, but it is as well an extraordinary moment in the history of our national conscience.
Dorothy Allison on John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath:"
"John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath is a novel completely of it's time - but that time is as much the concrete nineties as the dust bowl thirties. With language that echoes the poetry of the gospels and characters who cling to simple human decency under the most horrific assaults, it is both a work of social criticism and a celebration of the American character. The Joad family speaks to us of all the homeless and displaced families on our streets today, and to the fears and prejudices that tempt so many of us to close our eyes or look away. In telling the story of the Joads, John Steinbeck has retold the story of this nation. We are not a small mean people, Steinbeck's work proclaims, and to prove it he showed us the courage and grace in the poorest of us."
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J. E. Robinson (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-09 00:00>
When I bought the present book I did not realize that this book is actually two books in one. There is a 44 page introduction (what I call the first book) by the Steinbeck scholar Robert DeMott. His introduction is much longer than I had anticipated. This is in fact a mini-biography that describes Steinbeck's state of mind prior to and during the writing of the book. Also DeMott describes Steinbeck's life leading up to the book and what happens after the success of The Grapes of Wrath. In addition, DeMott has "suggestions for further reading". So I would recommend the present book.
It is hard for me to rate The Grapes of Wrath since it has become something of a classic with about 15 million copies or more in print. The rating is a bit subjective, but I would say 5 stars, even if it was not famous. The book is a "reality fiction" or simply realism, i.e.: pure fiction but like many other fiction writers it is based on real events that are accurately described and has a few characters based on friends of the author.
Steinbeck received both praise and criticism for the book. Many thought he had exaggerated the problems of the migrant workers. But as explained by DeMott if anything Steinbeck who had first hand working experiences with the migrant worker has slightly moderated the descriptions of the hardships faced by the migrants as presented in the book, and in no fashion did he exaggerate their problems.
This is a very interesting book and I would highly recommend buying and reading. It seems that the world has not changed that much since 1939. We still have migrant workers working under bad conditions although they are no longer from Oklahoma. They have been replaced by illegal aliens from Mexico, eager for the jobs. We still have some corporations and politicians trying to deny the reality of the hardships and issuing counter propaganda. We have perhaps even more problems today such as global warming, also denied by some. The world has not changed in 65 years - but the book is still of interest and perhaps even timely. |
Lynn Bann (MSL quote), Spain
<2007-01-09 00:00>
Tom Joad leaves prison and reaches home to find that his family have been expelled by the bank and the Shawnee Land and Cattle Company. On his way to his former home he finds a turtle that he keeps as a pet present for his little brother Noah. The turtle may stand as a metaphor for the slow but secure progress of the narrative. Tome also meets a "reformed" preacher who likes to question the goodness of baptism, and a former neighbour, Muley Graves, who has decided to stay in the land in Oklahoma contrary to the general westward pull: "Place where folks live is them folks."
As he meets them, the Joads are getting ready to sell all their belongings and move to California. But how will their sense of identity be affected by the migration? The author seems worried about the conflict between the land and the machine. Something worse than the devil seems to have got hold of hte country and thousands of people are moving West, looking for something brighter than what they have got. Is it possible to relinquish your home and survive it whole? On their way to California they learn the value of sharing and helping one another after they meet the Wilsons. One thing is sure, and these mass migrations are the proof that men can still be moved by a concept, a palpitating notion, a dream (even if such dream is reduced to the image of a white house by an orange groove).
One is to fear the day when man will refuse to move about, search, project. Even if this search is to lead to tragedy and loss. The will to live and to die and to survive for a concept makes of man a distinctive being in the universe: "Need is the stimulus to concept, concept to action." But can Paine and Jefferson exist alongside Marx and Lenin? From the point of view of the American dispossessed this seems dubious.
Economic racism ("them Okies") and the ills of American capitalism work into the spirit and capacity of endurance of the worn-out families of migrant agricultural workers. These families have ironically held a belief on the myth of the American dream: a place can be found where an honest man can work steadily his way to respectability. Nevertheless the Joads only find their own progressive breaking-up in the motion. Theey learn of the prejudice and fear of the authorities and citizens of California, and of the untold speculative crimes of the big and medium farmers. The wrath of The Grapes of Wrath is the sign of hunger and frustration at the way things are made to work: unused land and crops laid to waste.
The novel is a chant to family values and communal living, even if from the wrong side of the road. Tom Joad learns the importance of forming part of a larger group, even if he eventually gets separated from the people he loves because of his crimes. What is it that makes people survive under the most terrible conditions? |
Roger Brunyate (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-09 00:00>
Realistic and poetic at the same time, angry and compassionate, and still amazingly relevant after two-thirds of a century. This brings the Depression more real than anything I have read, and yet it is far from being a depressing book. One of Steinbeck's themes is how when people are cast out and cast down, their basic humanity draws them together into a big family governed by the laws of simple goodness and compassion. Perhaps this is a sentimental view, but it is attained one agonizing step at a time. Against this he sets the impersonal forces of big business, a pitiless economy, besieged communities hiding behind a corrupt police force, and the indifferent hand of nature, portrayed in short interleaved chapters that can be lyrical or bitter, passionate or cynically understated.
These short anonymous sections are absolutely necessary to the scale of the book, but some of them have a set-piece quality that at times seems somewhat dated. Not so Steinbeck's treatment of the main narrative, especially his portrayal of individuals: Tom Joad, prison-hardened and wiser than his years, Casy the preacher who loses his faith to arrive at stronger truths, and Ma Joad who holds the family together. These are people totally of their time and place, and yet timeless, a testament to the almost unquenchable power of the human spirit. And nothing is more moving than the way the novel ends: with a simple act of kindness by one broken human being to another, that in Steinbeck's hands becomes a sacrament of grace, bringing tears to the eyes and hope to the soul.
I first tried to read THE GRAPES OF WRATH four decades ago, in England in my mid-twenties, but gave up. I found it impossible to follow the dialect, I utterly lacked the knowledge of American history in the Depression era, and I dare say I lacked the life experience to appreciate the book's moral strength. For the second and third of these reasons, at least, I thus find it strange that the novel is so often assigned at the high-school level. After living in the USA now for 35 years, it means so much more to me. This is not because of history or language, but because the issues which made the book relevant in 1939 are still present in American life today, in its politics, its corporate culture, some aspects of its religion... but also in the enduring human spirit which Steinbeck so powerfully celebrates. |
Whilhelm Ritter (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-09 00:00>
The Grapes of Wrath is supposedly an American classic. The fact that it is considered such explains many of my problems with American literature and American culture in general. In order to show what a poor contender this novel is, I'm going to contrast it to something that's actually great literature, Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky.
Where to begin? First and most importantly, the narrative is uninspiring. The prose is dry, dispassionate and bland. Not dessicated and spare and powerful like Camus, but just dull. The interchapters, in particular, are tedious and pretensious exercises in literary superfluity. All of your middle-school english teachers no doubt told you that when you write something you should 'show not tell,' and that's good advice, but Steinbeck just tells you the story and keeps telling it for 600 miserable pages. So thus the manner of the novel's writing adds nothing to the book, and indeed detracts from it. Contrast this to a novel by Dostoevsky like Crime and Punishment or Notes from Underfround where the narrative itself is feverish, illucid and grating, reflecting the protagonist's wretchedness.
Next, all the characters are delightfully black and white, on the whole. Casey is messianic, the men killing him are devils, and there's no in between. Contrast this to the moral ambiguities of Crime and Punishment and you'll see why Steinbeck comes off the worse.
On a related note, the novel seems to have no means of conveying a spiritual message of its own, since the prose is so soulless, but Steinbeck tries to make it spiritual by inserting Casey's tedious neotransc- endentalist sermonizing. Contrast this to Crime and Punishment, where the moral is so integral to novel that any expounding of it is entirely natural.
So if you enjoy complex, multilayered characters, an interesting writing style and stimulating philosophical questions in a novel, stop yourself before you pick up this inexplicably 'classic' novel and read something by a Russian instead.
(A negative review. MSL remarks.)
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