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Great choice to introduce people to a writer who wrote many of the best books of the 20th century. We read it in California as a One State, One Book choice around 2002. This is an astonishing book, a spellbinder like today's mysteries, but with a social conscience. And the ending, wow, a shocker.
Steinbeck is one of the greats and needs to be a part of everyone's library. This is the one book that I recommend that everyone reads at least twice.
I do.NM No., these ordinary white American folk were honest farmers who had been forcibly evicted from their homes and the land they had worked for generations. Those were just some of my private thoughts as I finally put down a copy of this book - read. Could I possibly give this book anything less than the maximum rating it so richly deserves. A week's work for 1,000 fruit pickers paying 50 cents an hour is advertised to 3,000 hungry people who then pass on the message. More importantly, those lessons are as relevant today as they were in 1939.Another similarity also failed to escape my notice; In this book we see how US police and other officials use their positions of authority to threaten and even blackmail the many thousands of American migrants who were simply looking for work in order to feed hungry mouths.
Seventy years on, here in the UK, we are besieged by TV programmes depicting our different police forces undertaking their various duties around the country. the version written by Steinbeck. For those people who never got around to reading this engaging and absorbing account of the Joad family, may I suggest you actually purchase a copy (any copy). and finally read it.Today the world is either in recession or emerging from the dark grip of this latest financial catastrophe. These people had not arrived from any foreign country and were not even black - something which would have made their persecution much easier. Consequently, 5,000 starving workers arrive in search of that employment. This was the organised, legalised daylight robbery and exploitation of the poor by the rich who were actively supported by the law enforcement agencies. Having done that, you too will draw parallels with our modern age and understand what I mean.
Then the banks insist the farmers reduced the rate to 25 cents and any landowner who questions that decision is swiftly reminded of his own vulnerability as a mortgagee. Yet more cheaply produced "reality" television. It was a deliberate ploy repeated time after time. Having finally finished reading this outstanding work, I wonder how many of you will still be wondering whatever happened to that perfectly matched pair of Bays.
Who am I to review one of the greatest literary works of all time. My own immediate reaction was to recognise a similarity between then and now - specifically with those modern banking practises which preyed on the sub-prime market. And fail it did in spectacular fashion - and yet, the fat cat bankers still draw bonuses based on "personal performance" and not on their company's overall profit or loss.I note from some of the comments appended to certain editions of this book, that various issues have been produced in which, apparently, Steinbeck's prose are changed to make the work an easier read. This is John Steinbeck at his exceptional best. With so much competition, the rate is lowered to 30 cents - take it or leave it.
Whilst some may find the book slow going at the start, Steinbeck quickly gathers in those loose strands until they suddenly pull together to assume a story, reveal a mental photograph and produce a relevance into which the reader becomes fully immersed. Should I even commence. If not, you cannot claim to have read this book at all - instead you have the equivalent of, say, a Romeo and Juliet story - set in Manhattan in the 21st Century - and there are plenty of those.In closing, I would urge anyone (indeed everyone) who has not already read an original version of this book If to go out and buy a copy - any old copy and then simply read it. I could hear those southern accents as hardships are endured and explained through the actions of those who lived them. In short, either you pay them 25 cents or you join them. Anyone attempting to organise his fellow workers is photographed, black-listed and branded a communist. Anyone who cared to consider precisely what "sub-prime" meant, knew it was a policy destined to fail. You will also be richer for having done so - as would those fat cats who, unfortunately, will probably never bother.
This is the book which described how families were starving to death because of corruption. Whilst not on the scale portrayed in this outstanding work, it is interesting that I should recognise that underlying attitude of arrogant superiority. Please don't take the easy option, take the version written as it was intended to be read - i.e. This is the book which stirred the American conscience, caused political reform and brought about change when first published in 1939. Now feed that to your children. I promptly learned local words and understood the dialect in which they were spoken as the Joad story unfolded. Whilst we may live in a time when millions of families are no longer allowed to starve to death - well, not in the developed world at any rate, I earnestly believe there are lessons to be learned from this book about the rich and powerful who care not for their fellow man but only for personal gain. Significantly, however, I have occasionally noticed how some police officers deliberately provoke a hostile situation where exists.
Like a great narrator, he's equally effective voicing male and female characters, conveying emotional depth without becoming maudlin, and maintain a good pace. If you haven't read the Grapes of Wrath, it's a journey like no other; not just into the human spirit, but into our nation's history, including vivid portrayals of farm foreclosure, migrant labor, and economics and social events that gave rise to organized labor.In addition to delivering highly memorable characters and scenes, Steinbeck offers an unusual but very effective structural device - narrative passages about primary characters are interspersed with passages from third-party perspectives, often resembling discrete short-stories, for example,- a property manager evicting a disbelieving farmer from his land- a salesman selling a used car to a desperate family heading West- family farms collapsing in the wake of farm-automation and vertically-integrated farm-canneries- a stolid turtle trudging along an Oklahoma dust bowl roadAll-in-all, The Grapes of Wrath is a feast for the mind and imagination, as much a must-read as say, the Catcher in the Rye.Dylan Baker's audio CD narration is outstanding. His narration compares with some of the best efforts from the generally incomparable George Guidall. Perhaps no scene in literature is more haunting and powerful than the conclusion of the Grapes of Wrath. I finished the audio book, narrated by Dylan Baker, some 2 weeks ago, and its sad irony and humanity still resonate with me.However, this scene is just one of dozens evoking the depths of human hope and sorrow.
They are enticed as so many others were to the land of promise and opportunity - California. How can a land so fertile and plentiful lay fallow or be exploited by a few and cause such heartache.The chapters alternate between the specific and intimate journey of the Joad family and shorter chapters which give a big picture of the migrant movement.This book affects you. Over the years I have attempted to read this classic several times and failed because the first 100 pages are slow and daunting. Unfortunately they are met with hardship, contempt, injustice, corruption, greed, prejudice and hunger to name a few. It is powerful. FINALLY - I was determined to plow (no pun intended) through this amazing book. I had a tough time with the southern dialect but after a while I even got used to that.The Joads are a hard-working family looking to make a living after loosing their small tenant farm in Oklahoma in the 1930s Dust Bowl.
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