A gritty, ultra realistc portrayal of America in the Great Depression. An absolute masterpiece of the human condition told through the eyes of the Joad family of Oklahoma travelling across route 66 in search of work and hope.
Steinbeck's opus is poetic and powerful, heartbreaking and hopeful all at the same time. I found my heart in my mouth many times when the Joads were a-moving towards the hope of work and money and food. There was always an undercurrent of threat, of danger in the pages and in the fields. Of man's ability to help another, but also of the pain he could cause another.
As wages fell during 1930s America, families moved from one transient job to another, huges caravans of middle americans filling up California and making the locals mean and distrustful. The air was thick with fear. Fear of starvation, fear of violence, fear of someone else getting what was yours. But it was also full of hope, and goodness and kindness. As Ma Joad says, the poorer the people get the more they want to give, the more they got to do for each other.
Frequently found on lists such as 100 books to read before you die, or 50 greatest novels of the 20th Century, The Grapes of Wrath lives up to its reputation and then some.
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