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travelsandbooks 's review for:
The Grapes of Wrath
by John Steinbeck
When I finished this book I put it down and stared out of the window, listening to my own breath.
I know that sounds wanky and pretentious. But it's true. This is one of the books which you don't know how to process. The things it covers are somehow too big for you to dip in and out of, and to put aside casually when you've finished it and carry on with life.
It tells the story of the Joad family who go to the West of America looking for work, because their farm's crop is destroyed by dust every year.
They are poor. They are grindingly, terrifyingly poor, and they are not alone. Steinbeck takes care to show at every point in the action that they are not only accompanied by thousands of other people, but they are also surrounded by unfathomable, unconquerable Nature.
When they get there, having faced death, poverty and most of all hunger on the way, they are mistreated. There are too many people. They have to work for a pittance, and if they do not, someone else will take their place. They move from place to place, and all happiness or success is fleeting and tinged with the precariousness that defines their life.
This novel is not a novel about sadness and failure, however. More than anything else, it's a novel about dignity. These poor, destitute people are some of the most dignified in any literature I've read, and they are surrounded by people who, if equally poor, are just as dignified. Everyone better off than them lacks their quiet self-respect and perseverance. If a baby dies in the makeshift camps that spring up along the way to California, word will spread and the family will find a pile of silver dollars outside their door in the morning so that the child can be buried. If a group of men want work, they will go together to split the petrol. A poor shopkeeper will give an extra handful of sugar to a woman red in the face with anger at his shop's extortion.
The prose is beautiful. The characters are sullen and guarded, but thoughtful and alive. The men and women are aware of their roles and are accepting of what needs to be done. The men understand masculinity. The ending speaks of hope not through the events that happen, but in the eternal hardiness of the family, their devotion to each other, and their dignity. On every page, that is what you notice even more than the poverty and injustice. Dignity.
"The men were silent and they did not move often. And the women came out of the houses to stand beside their men - to feel whether this time the men would break. ... After a while the faces of the watching men lost their bemused perplexity and became hard and angry and resistant. Then the women knew that they were safe and there was no break. ... Women and children knew deep in themselves that no misfortune was too great to bear if their men were whole."
"There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do. it's all part of the same thing. And some of the things folks do is nice and some ain't nice, but that's as far as any man got a right to say."
"The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it."
"Anybody can break down. It takes a man not to."
"I'm just pain covered with skin."
"A sin is somepin you ain't sure about. Them people that's sure about ever'thin an' ain't got no sin - well, with that kind a son-of-a-bitch, if I was God I'd kick their ass right outa heaven!"
"In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage."
"The break would not come; and the break would never come as long as fear could turn to wrath."
I know that sounds wanky and pretentious. But it's true. This is one of the books which you don't know how to process. The things it covers are somehow too big for you to dip in and out of, and to put aside casually when you've finished it and carry on with life.
It tells the story of the Joad family who go to the West of America looking for work, because their farm's crop is destroyed by dust every year.
They are poor. They are grindingly, terrifyingly poor, and they are not alone. Steinbeck takes care to show at every point in the action that they are not only accompanied by thousands of other people, but they are also surrounded by unfathomable, unconquerable Nature.
When they get there, having faced death, poverty and most of all hunger on the way, they are mistreated. There are too many people. They have to work for a pittance, and if they do not, someone else will take their place. They move from place to place, and all happiness or success is fleeting and tinged with the precariousness that defines their life.
This novel is not a novel about sadness and failure, however. More than anything else, it's a novel about dignity. These poor, destitute people are some of the most dignified in any literature I've read, and they are surrounded by people who, if equally poor, are just as dignified. Everyone better off than them lacks their quiet self-respect and perseverance. If a baby dies in the makeshift camps that spring up along the way to California, word will spread and the family will find a pile of silver dollars outside their door in the morning so that the child can be buried. If a group of men want work, they will go together to split the petrol. A poor shopkeeper will give an extra handful of sugar to a woman red in the face with anger at his shop's extortion.
The prose is beautiful. The characters are sullen and guarded, but thoughtful and alive. The men and women are aware of their roles and are accepting of what needs to be done. The men understand masculinity. The ending speaks of hope not through the events that happen, but in the eternal hardiness of the family, their devotion to each other, and their dignity. On every page, that is what you notice even more than the poverty and injustice. Dignity.
"The men were silent and they did not move often. And the women came out of the houses to stand beside their men - to feel whether this time the men would break. ... After a while the faces of the watching men lost their bemused perplexity and became hard and angry and resistant. Then the women knew that they were safe and there was no break. ... Women and children knew deep in themselves that no misfortune was too great to bear if their men were whole."
"There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do. it's all part of the same thing. And some of the things folks do is nice and some ain't nice, but that's as far as any man got a right to say."
"The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it."
"Anybody can break down. It takes a man not to."
"I'm just pain covered with skin."
"A sin is somepin you ain't sure about. Them people that's sure about ever'thin an' ain't got no sin - well, with that kind a son-of-a-bitch, if I was God I'd kick their ass right outa heaven!"
"In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage."
"The break would not come; and the break would never come as long as fear could turn to wrath."