We heard former first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt's thoughts about GOW the day we began this journey with the Joads.
"The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, both repels and attracts you. The horrors of the picture, so well drawn, make you dread sometimes to begin the next chapter, and yet you cannot lay the book down or even skip a page. The book is coarse in spots, but life is coarse in spots, and the story is very beautiful in spots just as life is...Even from life's sorrows some good must come. What could be a better illustration than the closing chapter of this book?" ~ Eleanor Roosevelt, 1939
Along that same vein about the effect The Grapes of Wrath should have on its readers, John Steinbeck wrote to his editor:
"I've done my damndest to rip a reader's nerves to rags.
I don't want him satisfied."
Did he succeed in doing that to you?
If so, how did he accomplish it?
If not, why weren't you affected in that way?
and what more appropriate music to wrap up our study than one more tune from The Boss.....