A review by startjpw23
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

adventurous challenging dark emotional informative sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

 The story is set in the 1930’s (during the Depression). It centers around the Joad family. They have a farm in Oklahoma where they raise crops. There are bad dust storms throughout the Mid-West. The crops of the Joad’s and many other families fail. Without their crops to sell, the banks who hold the mortgages take over the farms and force the farm families off their land. The banks have big farm machines that they send to the farms. These machines can do a lot of the work on the fields that the farm families previously did. And they can do the work way faster. Handbills are circulated all through the Mid-West saying that there is plentiful work in California. They paint a real rosy picture of the work situation in California. The Joads decide that they must move to California to find work. They do some modifications on a truck so the truck can carry 12 people (11 Joads and a former preacher who is a friend of theirs), a dog, and stuff that will help them make the trip. It takes a lot of faith and desperation to make a 2,000-mile trip like this. The story of the Joad family is interspersed with chapters that talk more generally about what went on during this mass exodus to California and what went on in California. The two most important characters in the story are Ma Joad and one of her sons, Tom Joad. They center the story. What people expected in California and the reality are far different. The story goes from there. The author writes great prose. He writes very detailed descriptions. The story is slow paced, but that didn’t revent me from enjoying it. I didn’t always agree with what the characters did. But I was invested in their story. The Joad’s are very resilient in the face of tremendous hardships. This is a sad, disturbing story. The characters do experience occasional pockets of joy. There are deaths and grieving. There are animal deaths. There is a detailed description of pigs being slaughtered and prepped for eating. One character likes to run over animals while driving. There are abusive police. There are beatings. There are killings. Some Christians are portrayed in a very poor light. There is some talk of sex. There is some talk of spousal abuse. There is talk of disciplining children that most of us would consider excessive now. There is a little racism. I recommend this book to someone who wants to read about what it was like in the Mid-West and California during Dustbowl times. And someone who wants to read about a very resilient family. If any of the concerns I mentioned are problems for you, you may not want to read the book. 
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