The Grapes of Wrath **** (out of five)

On Sunday I finished the second book in my book list challenge. As you can see from my rating, this one went much better than the last. "The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck. I had of course heard of this book, and the resultant movie, and had always had the impression that it was supposed to be quite good. Though I don't think I had ever actually talked with anyone about the book who had actually read it. I have previously read "Of Mice and Men" by Steinbeck so I had an overall favorable impression of his writing. This book is set during the dust bowl era of American History, beginning with the mass migration of tenant farmers from the plains states as corporate/banking farming begins to be the norm. Hundreds of thousands of people were forced to uproot and move West, where the dream and hope of jobs and plenty had been advertised purposely to bring in many migrant workers and thus drive down the cost of labor.

This book was amazing. First, the writing is so good. Steinbeck filled this book with the same great prose that made me love "Of Mice and Men". So descriptive, not overly flowery, but enough to really pull you in to the world he is describing. Unfortunately, the world he usually describes is quite depressing. In more than one part of the book, tears came to my eyes as I read. It is hard to not imagine what it would be like to literally be unable to feed your children, and be helpless as they actually starved to death. That was the reality for some of these people, brought out through this book. I found Steinbeck's style in this book to be very interesting. He would intersperse short chapters that were descriptive of the time period generally, with the longer chapters that followed the main characters of the story. It kind of set up the world as it was, that you then followed the Joad family through as they attempted to find someplace to stay where they could work and feed themselves. As I read the book, and thought about the time period that it came out in, I was surprised that Steinbeck wasn't black listed. There would definitely be people who would read the book, and think Steinbeck was a communist (which incidentally, he kind of was personally). But I found one passage in the book particularly telling. As a land owner is shouting at a bunch of migrant workers, screaming about the *expletive* dirty reds, one of them stops him and asks what a red is. The land owner answers angrily that a red is someone who wants 30 cents, when they are paying 25. Befuddled, the man says, I guess I'm a red. That may be what makes it so that this book doesn't feel like a political propaganda piece. These people aren't interested in politics, they haven't read Das Kapital, or The Communist Manifesto, let alone espouse Marx. They just want to be able to find a job, work a full day and get paid a price, literally, that will be enough to buy food for that nights dinner. And many of them can't. This book came at an interesting time for me personally, as I just finished going to the Republican State Convention as a delegate. I couldn't help but see similarities between this book, and some extreme views in our day. The most obvious being the angry and sometimes violent reaction to migrant labor today (coming from south of the border). But interestingly enough, just two days ago I had an argument with some other State delegates about food stamps. They argued that the program should be ended in its entirety, immediately. That it was just not right to take 'my' money, and give it to my neighbor. I thought back to "The Grapes of Wrath", and the utter helplessness of the people who watched as their children died. Anyway. I loved this book, and would recommend it to everyone. The next book on the list is "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller.