Grapes of Wrath Assignment 5: Chapters 27-End

Even though it should probably be covered at the end of the entry, I want to talk about how the book ended first. Although it was expertly written, I can't help but be a little disappointed with the ending. From the very beginning of the book, I considered Tom to be the main character, and although Ma tells him to leave, the book never tells what actually ends up happening to him. I feel like a book should show what happens to each character. I will never be able to know, and that is disappointing. There was also no real resolution to the entire dilemma that the Joad family was facing. In class, when we went over the Grapes of Wrath powerpoint, I, for some reason, thought that it was going to have a terribly sad/disastrous ending, which is not what happened at all. Well, I guess it is a sad ending, seeing as they never resolve their problems, but it wasn't the type of sadness i was expecting. As I said before, I was expecting something big to happen. I don't really consider them being flooded out a big disaster either. They whole ending just left me hanging, which in all honesty, annoys me. I spent a great deal of time connecting with these characters, and then just nothing. No epilogue. Not even a hint at what happens after? Come on.

Throughout the book, the characters seemed to slowly leave the group, and it progressively kept getting smaller and smaller. When it turned out that Rose of Sharon's baby was not alive, I couldn't help but wonder if that was yet another character who had left the group. The baby, although unborn, was talked about, and can easily be regarded as part of the group. By being dead, it was removed from the group, along with all the other characters who had left. I am positive that this is symbolic, but I can't place exactly what it symbolizes. It is probably to show how the mass migration destroyed once stable families, but again I'm not sure. Maybe its something we could discuss in a Socratic Circle.

It has been brought up that there could be religious connections within the book, and I was thinking about potential connections, and I noticed that there may be a connection between the story about Noah's Ark, and the rain, and the rain at the end of the book. In the Bible, God brought the rain upon the Earth because it was corrupt, and the rain would drown the humans, and cleanse the Earth from its filth. This rain in California, sort of cleansed California, because it caused many of the migrant workers, who were considered dirty and corrupt, to leave and find other places to go. This connection might be kind of a stretch, but it was the only one that I picked up. Actually, there may have been a connection about how Tom gave up himself and left the family towards the end, to protect them, which could be similar to the story of Jesus dying on the cross to save the human race. They're both stories of martyrdom.

Other than that, I haven't really got much else to say. Nothing new seemed to be brought up in these final chapters. They essentially just seemed to be summing up what was going on, and drawing it to some sort of end. Overall, I am extremely happy with the book. I have become a huge fan of Steinbeck's writing style. I found it to be a beautifully written masterpiece and I intend to read some of his other works in the very near future.