The Grapes of Wrath

The first book I read by John Steinbeck was Of Men and Mice, which was for our English GCSE, It was a very short book but it had a striking ending which ties everything in the book together, in a way that you would never imagine. The same can be said for The Grapes of Wrath, the ending leaves you speechless and shocked. I love Stienbeck’s attention to detail, he can spend a whole page describing the tiniest of details, which allows you to see the scene as vividly as if you were there yourself.

The book is set in the America of the 1930’s, and it follows the Joad family as they migrate from Oklahoma to California, “the land of promise”. Kicked out of their homes, and left jobless, just like the hundreds of families around them the Joad party (made up of twelve people, including two children, two elderly people, a pregnant woman and an ex con) set off with their meagre belongings and themselves in a truck, hoping to find a home and jobs in California. Throughout the journey they face various trials and tribulations, which make you sympathise greatly with their plight. However the most horrific test is given to them by humans themselves, at every turn they take, they face people ready to take advantage of them, lying in wait, getting ready to pounce on them at any moment. Yet the family have no choice, they either comply, or face starvation, they have no choice when they sell their things for a meagre amount, they have no choice when they work for fifteen cents an hour, as there’s always someone waiting to work for even less, they’re that desperate. They have no choice to live out of their truck, they don’t have anything to wash with, to eat, they have to scrimp and save to get petrol for their truck and things don’t get any better in California. It is there they are faced with hostilities from the locals and end up living in slums, It is when you get to the ending that you realise what they have to resort to, and in fact the ending is very abrupt and comes when you least expect it, making it all the more shocking. When coupled with the image left in your mind, it leaves you speechless, with mixed feelings flowing through your body.

The thing which makes this book all the more harrowing is that people have been facing these kinds of problems since time began. There is always a group of people immigrating to a “better” country, running from famine, war, or perhaps they just want a better life. This book shows you what the immigrants have to put up with, what they have to give up and go through, and the only thing keeping them going is the vain hope that they are going to a better place. In a lot of situations that so called better place isn’t all that and in many case it is worse. Yet this book deals with people immigrating in the same country, what about people who immigrate to a totally new country, where the language is different, the customs are different , the currency is different in fact the whole culture is different. Imagine what they have to put up with, in fact when I think about it, my grandparents and parents probably went through the same thing when they migrated to England.

Then the locals make things worse, the family in the book were called “Okies” which was used in a similar context to “Pakis”, both which have negative connotations when used with evil intent. The Californians believe them to be dirty, smelly and animal like, but when you read it from the immigrants point of view you learn they have no choice. If the locals shun them and force them to live in slums and “Hooverville” as it is labelled in the book then obviously they are going to smell, if they have no access to clean water, then it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that they are going to be dirty.

It’s reading books like this, which makes you realise how truly blessed we are…..