I think that The Grapes of Wrath is one of the best books that I have ever had to read for any school project, and it’s better than some of the book that I have willingly chosen to read in my free time. I think that it is just the way that Steinbeck wrote it and how honest and raw it was. It was also very detailed which helped me connect more with the characters and helped me visualize the story better. I can easily tell why the book has sold over fifteen million copies, why it still sells 150,000 copies annually, why it won a Pulitzer Prize in 1940, and why it was one of the main reasons why John Steinbeck got the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962 (Steinbeck xi).
The title of the book comes from Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” in which one line was “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored” (Steinbeck x). The original hymn was written during the civil war, and it criticized the Southern soldiers, and its message was anti-slavery. It talks of how only god can right the wrongs the Southern people have done. I think this is why Steinbeck picked this as the title; maybe the only way that the wrongs that big farm owners and the corporate executives did against the farmers of the Central United States. The title also worked because there were many vineyards in California, and those grapes were the price of many families being displaced.
I guess there is no way to get around it, the ending of the book was… different. I have never once heard of a classic book that had an ending that involved a woman breast feeding a grown, half starving man. That is why the ending is so memorable; it is very, very unique. It shows how far the people were willing to go to help a starving person. It will be tough to forget the ending, and that is exactly what Steinbeck most likely wanted.
Steinbeck, John, and Robert J. DeMott. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Penguin, 2006. Print.
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