Grapes of Wrath Ch1-13: Entry 2

Like I said before, I'm not exactly sure what I'm supposed to be doing in these entries, so I'm essentially just winging it. But I distinctly recalled the word "double" being said when referring to the entries, so i figured that I would do a second one to be on the safe side.

Continuing what I said in my previous entry, I am still very happy with this book. This is my first time ever reading Steinbeck, and I have found every aspect of it so far to be amazing. In my first journal entry, I showed some worry that the book might start to get boring, as I have heard from many people that it does, but it does not seem to be headed in that direction. And I'm pretty sure that its safe to say that I don't expect it to suddenly become terrible, seeing as I'm already 122 pages in and still loving every second of it.

As for the plot of the story, I predict that when everybody arrives in California, things are not going to be as good as they had all expected them to be. I caught some foreshadowing during the part where Tom (younger) is talking to his mother in the kitchen and he mentions that he knew a guy from California who said that it wasn't as good as people made it seem. And it was shown very strongly towards the end of the last chapter, where the mechanic is explaining to them how he has seen people going back the way they came, and he told them that they wouldn't be able to find work there. Also, so far the entire story has had a very melancholic vibe to it. The author has an amazing ability to convey the sadness that is present in every one of the characters. I feel like he is going to keep that emotion which he has instilled in us readers, and continue to use it throughout the book. By having the Joads go on this huge trip and look forward to a prosperous future, and then have it not be there when they arrived would do an excellent job of continuing the ever-present melancholy in this story.

Although I spent the majority of the last entry talking about his writing style, I am still in awe at how amazingly he can convey emotion through his vivid imagery and get the reader to emotionally relate to how all of the characters in the story feel. He describes things in a way that is easily comprehensible, yet still extremely detailed, which are two things that combine to make this novel so incredible. He has an amazing talent for capturing and conveying human emotions within his novels. I have found this to be a large portion of why I am enjoying this book so much because in all honesty, the plot hasn't become very intricate, yet he still has a way of captivating readers. I'm already looking forward to continuing reading this novel.

-Nick Kennedy

Grapes of Wrath Journal Entry

Well, I'm going to start this off by explaining that I don't really know what I am supposed to be doing. Usually for the English reading assignments I just annotate what I have read, but seeing as the assigned pages for Grapes of Wrath are fairly long, I decided to try writing the journals. So far I've found that I like not having to annotate the book. I didn't notice it before, but when I'm writing in the book directly, I feel as though I'm straining to comment on things that don't need to be commented on. By doing this, I find that a large portion of my post-it notes are useless or unimportant. And the constant starting and stopping to write a note really broke up the reading, and made it hard to get fully immersed in the text. Moving on...

So far I have found this book to be utterly amazing, which is something I honestly was not expecting. I had heard from multiple people that Steinbeck was dry, and that it was a slow read. Even Mrs. Libertucci commented in class that some people find that he goes into too much detail, and that it can get a little boring, but I haven't found that to be the case at all. I'm currently only finished with Chapter 7, so it is still entirely possible that the book could spiral downhill and become terribly boring, but for some reason I don't feel like that is going to happen. Even though there is not much action going on during the story, Steinbeck has the ability to captivate his readers with vivid imagery. He does go into noticeably long descriptions of seemingly trivial portions of the story, and I can see how some people would become easily annoyed by this, but I find it to be very intriguing and pleasurable how he can create such realistic images and describe situations so well that you can have a complete understanding of what is taking place.

Another thing I noticed about this book so far that I really liked was how in certain chapters where he was describing what was happening on the farm and with the family, he used words like "the tenants" or "the women" even though he was talking specifically about the Joad family. By doing this he showed the reader that the same thing was happening to people all over. I just thought it was really unusual and interesting how he used broad terms instead of just explaining that it was happening to people everywhere.

I also was very fond of the chapter in the book where Steinbeck explained what was happening to the turtle prior to it being found by Tom Joad. By doing this, it, in a sense, connected the reader to the turtle. If Steinbeck had just left out that entire chapter, and just said that Joad found the turtle, it would have seemed like more of an object than a living creature. By showing how it lived and what it was doing before Joad found it, the reader is shown how the turtle is a living creature, and that it existed before Joad found it, and that it will exist after. I also predict that this will become a recurring theme within this book, because at another point, Muley is talking about how he went back to all of the places that he had childhood memories from, and he was commenting on how even though they are not there physically, the memories are still there, and that they will be there forever. It is hard to explain, but I'm not really sure how I could go about explaining it better.

So overall, I am really enjoying this book so far. I find his writing style to be very fascinating, and his imagery to be excellent. It almost reminds me of the way Herman Hesse wrote in his book Siddhartha. It is beautiful and captures and conveys the emotions of the characters extremely well. I'm really hoping that the rest of the book doesn't let me down.

-Nick Kennedy