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