Read The Grapes of Wrath

A few years ago, I bought a copy of The Grapes of Wrath at the Borders in SLC that was closing. It's the "Steinbeck Centennial Edition" with the awesome cover and pages that I love. I started reading it a few months after I purchased it. But I never got farther than the second chapter.

A couple months ago I came across on article on NPR about a world-wide book club they were hosting to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the publishing of The Grapes of Wrath. I took my long-unopened copy off my bookshelf and started reading. And reading and reading.

The book earned Steinbeck a Pulitzer and National Book Award, and it's worth those awards and more. Steinbeck writes like a poet when he describes the land. He makes you see the sun and the weathered crops and the rain as it falls. You see the devastation and feel the heartache; he somehow finds words for the feeling of farming and working the land and being cut down and being so tired but trudging on.

Then there's the people--the Joad family, who make the trek from their desolate, family farm in Oklahoma to the rich lands of California. Their hope and optimism for what the state will bring is sad. The trek brings loss to the family, but they also experience kindness and generosity. They experience what it's like to be looked down on as an "other" and "Okie". The treatment of migrants is so awful that I couldn't believe it. What someone will do for food, to feed your family, is not something you should ever have to know.

Ma Joad, to me, is the star of the novel. She takes charge and does what needs to be done. She knows the importance of family and staying together. She is quite simply amazing.

Many lament the book's critique of capitalism. But it's a fair critique, at least for the time frame. Sometimes I'm still idealistic in believing we can live like those in the government camps--taking care of ourselves and all working together. At least read it so we can have a good discussion.