BOOKS I REREADING
Rereading: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck — get swept along by the fury
In the Great Depression, the Joad family leave Oklahoma and trek 2,000 miles. This classic American novel is sentimental but full of verve. By David Mills
Dorris Bowden, Jane Darwell and Henry Fonda in The Grapes Of Wrath (1940)
ALAMY
It’s just not what I expected. Despite The Grapes of Wrath being one of the landmark novels of the American 20th century, I had never read it. I felt like I had, though, having seen all the perplexingly beautiful black and white photographs of ragged families during the Great Depression in beaten-up vintage cars and knowing that Steinbeck’s outraged social conscience had produced a colossal bestseller and caused a furore. I imagined it to be some kind of mix of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Huckleberry Finn, The Waltons and Moby-Dick. I was (mostly) wrong.
The narrative arc is simple: the Joad family leave their failed farmstead in the dust bowl of Oklahoma and trek west to look for work in the promised land of California.
