It seems that we are all late, but as always, it's not a problem! We'll just add up from here all the comments for the rest of the book, so please add whatever remarks, comments, ideas that "The grapes of wrath" are provoking you... By the way, a very good title, if you ask me... what do you think?
We'll give some more weeks to reach the final line before we start thinking about the next book, the first of 2014, sounds good?
There are two paragraphs that I want to highlight:
ReplyDelete"If he'll take twenty-five, I'll do it for twenty.
No, me, I'm hungry. I'll work for fifteen. I'll work for food. The kids. You ought to see them. ... And this was good, for wages went down and prices stayed up. The great owners were glad and they sent out more handbills to bring more people in. And wages went down and prices stayed up. And pretty soon now we'll have serfs again."
And second one:
"And the roads were crowded with men ravenous for work, murderous for work. And the companies, the banks worked at their own doom and they did not know it. The fields were fruitful, and starving men moved on the roads. The granaries were full and the children of the poor grew up rachitic, and the pustules of pellagra swelled on their sides. The great companies did not know that the line between hunger and anger is a thin line".
Ain't this too familiar?
It felt heartbreaking to read those paragraphs. Those, and each one that describes the epiphany of the family. As it has been said, it is the same as reading about the epiphany of millions of migrants nowadays. Maybe a difference in today's migrations is the tragedy of going to a different country with different language and culture.
ReplyDeleteCompletely agree with you two. The book is so well written, it transmits despair, hopelessness, misery. I am finally reaching the end, and after what Rocio said I am curious to see how it all ends, but getting there is painful; the last chapters are tough. I am suffering with the family and with reality. Unfortunately, it clearly depicts human nature.
ReplyDelete