FREE ESSAY ON GRAPES OF WRATH

GRAPES OF WRATH

A Book Review of: 
John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck wrote this book in the hopes that people would be able to see what was
happening to our nation's people. He wanted to open their eyes to see the hardships that
migrants faced everyday and he accomplished this through the telling of the Joad's family
story. Starting with the day that their ex-convict son comes home on parole, the lives of
the Joad's never really go back to normal. After being evicted from their property by the
bank, the whole family packs up and goes the only way they can...West. Their plight
involves beginning a new life by casting away the methods of the past and being able to
endure the misfortunes that life throws at them. Of course their progress is hampered by
an unreliable truck and by the quest for the dollar that all migrants had. Through their
journey to find work and settle down, the Joad's encounter many calamities that test
their relationship as a family and their own limits as individuals. As in real life, not
everyone succeeds with his or her goals, and this story of hardship is no different. 
In the beginning of the book we get an early look at Steinbeck's ideals when Muley Graves
says,...if a fella's got somepin to eat an' another fella's hungry-why, the first fella
ain't got no choice. This is something that was very true back in the past and something
that most people lived by. Families could not see people starve to death when they had
food to eat themselves. Although they might be starting a new life, the ideals don't
change because that is what makes an individual unique. 
Uncle John Joad said, Go down an' tell 'em. Go down in the street an' rot an' tell 'em
that way.
Steinbeck's writing style, as always, is rich with colorful language and sensual images.
His pages are filled with lines such as, The dust-filled air muffled sound more
completely than fog does, and all sorts of literary elements from similes to
personifications. There is one thing that a reader will never get with The Grapes of
Wrath and that is bored because of how descriptive the settings are. The passages of
nature are especially vibrant and it would be those that you could imagine very easily
because of the picture he paints. The dialogue of the book is unique in that it is
written the way it was spoken in the past. The spelling is quite unorthodox due to that,
because many times people would link words together or just omit certain sounds in words
and because Steinbeck was going for authenticity, that is what you would read. Another
method that Steinbeck used to describe places was to let the reader's minds fill in the
blanks. He would just give you the essentials that you would need to know, and your mind
paint the rest and it would be exactly the way Steinbeck would have wanted it. His style
of writing is not anymore difficult than any other style, but it will most likely slow
you down, I know that I've spent some time re-reading passages that I might have not
quite understood the first time.