Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Some may struggle to finish, its worth it though., 14 Jul 2005
I was seriously contemplating 5 stars for this book, but then as I got toward the end of it I was reminded how tough a book this can be to read at times. I don't mean it's full of difficult long words, or that the paragraph structure is such that the reader becomes dazed and confused. What I mean is that the subject matter can really grind you down, but that is what makes the book so impressive.The Grapes of Wrath follows a migrant farm working family from the 1930's who, during the great depression, are forced to leave their home and their livelihood to seek a future in California. This in essence is the thread of the story but what the Grapes of Wrath does is it branches off to give a number of sub-stories which really give the reader a sense of what life was like for these migrant workers. The book in interspliced with a number social commentaries on this time, which show how badly these people were thought of, and also shows how normal "god fearing" people can turn on their own people, scared that these outsiders will ruin their way of life. These moments though do not constitute the whole book and there are a variety of other stories (purely fictional) around the family and how they bond together, yet break apart as the journey slowly wears them down. The greatness of the book is the timelessness of it. Steinbeck shows how people will turn on each other with the right provocation. In Grapes of Wrath it's the wealthy Californians, we can see this mimicked to a point in peoples attitudes to modern day asylum seekers. People fear what they don't understand and what they are scared of they attack. A brilliantly written book but really does need perseverance.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Voice of the Migrants for Generations to come!, 21 Mar 2004
"The Grapes of Wrath" is a powerful indictment of the oppression endured by the migrant families of the American mid-west during the depression years of the 1930's. The farming-belt of the mid-west had suffered severe drought. "Dusters" swept across the farmland, skimming off the topsoil, leaving behind a dustbowl, only a few sparse sprigs of wheat surviving. The tenant farms were foreclosed and the families forcibly tractored off the land in a ruthless drive to maximise profit margins. Circe 250,000 migrants, "refugees from the dust", pulled up stakes and headed west on route 66, the road of flight to California, the golden land of dreams and opportunity, drawn by the prospect of picking work, harvesting oranges and peaches. The influx of rootless migrant workers centred on the San Joachin valley, California, and the huge farms therein, drifting in search of work from squatter camps to government camps to shacks in tied labour camps charging excessive rents and inflated company-store prices. The overwhelming glut of migrants flooding through the valley swamped the harvesting work available, driving down wages to peanuts level as they desperately scrabbled "to pull, to pick, to cut - anything, any burden to bear, for food".
This is the destiny that fate had in store for the Joad family in "The Grapes of Wrath". Forced off their farm, truck piled high with their meagre belongings, the Joads set forth on an epic 2000 miles haul from Sallislaw in Oklahoma through the western desert states of Arizona and New Mexico and onto the San Joachin valley. The gut-wrenching story of the Joads heroic journey is interspersed with short "relief" chapters on peripheral aspects of their route 66 experience, the trickery of used-car salesmen or a snapshot of life in a truck-stop diner, to cite but two examples; other chapters function as social commentary on, for example, the stomach turning practice of spraying mountains of oranges with kerosene or dumping potatoes in the river under armed guard to protect market prices, at a time when hundreds of thousands of migrants were literally starving. This structure enables Steinbeck at once to follow closely the fortunes of the Joads and cast a wider eye over what is happening in society during the depression years.
However, Steinbeck's narrative, in my view, is at its most powerful and compelling on the road, chronicling the Joads suffering and misfortune trucking along the endless narrow concrete miles to Bakersfield, California, revealing qualities of grit, guts and resilience in their desperate struggle for survival in the face of death, starvation, hostility, exploitation and harassment. Ma Joad's indomitable spirit and dogged determination to hold her family together is truly inspirational. Steinbeck's powerful voice depicting the plight of the migrants during the hard times of the 1930's depression years, the hardship and oppression endured by thousands upon thousands of families like the Joads, will resonate for generations to come.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
every once in a while........., 23 April 2004
By A Customer
..you read something which simply grabs hold of you and will not let you go. It is 3 months since I finished this book and it can only be described as truly an epic. Steinbeck's ambition is immense - the landscapes and horizons for the Joad family's fateful journey are vast and daunting.
Overall the story broke my heart - to think that such injustices and hardship prevailed for such numbers of people only 70-80years ago was astonishing. So much for "land of the free"!
I cried at the denouement - having wondered how it could end. Realising that there could naturally be no thought of a happy ending, I was genuinely shocked by what happened in the final pages, even though I feltI was beyond shock given the horrors I had already witnessed during the Joad's dignified but incessant decline.
Take some time and treat yourself to a true literary masterpiece. I feel genuinely rewarded having read this and it has opened my eyes to social injustice in America that Ic ould never have understood from a history book. I hope it has such an impact on you as well.
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