The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

     "I don't know what the country's comin' to," the fat man continued. His complaint had shifted and he was no longer talking to or about the Joads. "Fifty-six cars a folks go by ever' day, folks all movin' West with kids an' househol' stuff. Where they goin'? What they gonna do?"

    "Doin' the same as us," said Tom. "Goin' someplace to live. Tryin' to get along. That's all."

That just might be the theme of this novel: regular, ordinary people doing the best they can, "tryin' to get along", in a world where the cards all seem stacked against them. Just out of prison, Tom Joad comes home to find his family driven off the land they've farmed for generations. These sharecroppers are hard workers, but what are they without their land? So, they sell everything they own and set out for California, hoping to build a better life there. But there aren't jobs for them in California, at least not ones that pay enough for them to live on; and though they scrimp and scrabble, they never seem able to get ahead. Loss and tragedy seem to be their lot in life. 

In this novel, John Steinbeck skillfully depicts what life was like during the great Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s, as well as the hardships, hopes and defeats of the Joad family. At 455 pages, this isn't a fast read. But there's a rhythm to Steinbeck's prose that I really appreciate; it's almost poetic. Like in this paragraph:

"66 is the path of people in flight, refugees from dust and shrinking land, from the thunder of tractors and shrinking ownership, from the desert's slow northward invasion, from the twisting winds that howl up out of Texas, from the floods that bring no richness to the land and steal what little richness is there. From all of these the people are in flight, and they come into 66 from the tributary side roads, from the wagon tracks and the rutted country roads. 66 is the mother road, the road of flight."

Did I love this one? Not exactly. But only because the Joads' story is so sad. No matter how hard they try they never get ahead; things just keep going from bad to worse for them. And I hated the hopelessness of their journey. But I do like the way Steinbeck writes. He tells a powerful and sweeping story, and I can see why The Grapes of Wrath is considered a classic. And I'm very glad I read it. Written in 1939, this one counts as my 20th Century Classic for Karen's Back to the Classics Challenge.

Happy Reading!

The Mill on the Floss

At the heart of George Eliot's novel is young Maggie Tulliver and her brother, Tom. Their father is a simple mill owner who loves his "dark-eyed, demonstrative, rebellious girl" and hopes to improve his son's lot in life with a good education. But life in an Eliot novel doesn't always go as planned. Mr. Tulliver loses his mill on the Floss in a court case to Mr. Wakem, and when he dies, Maggie and Tom don't have much beyond each other, and their three officious aunts. (They actually have a fourth aunt who is kind, but very poor having eight children of her own.)

The two Tulliver children are a study in contrasts. Maggie is clever and impulsive; she often acts rashly, then as quickly repents. She has a passionate nature, intense feelings, and a need to love and be loved. Tom, on the other hand, is not as clever or sensitive as his younger sister, though he is handsome. Honor and respectability matter to him. And he has a strong sense of justice and of his own rightness, which, at times, can make him a bit cold and heartless. But he does love his sister.

As Maggie grows into a lovely young woman, two men fall in love with her. Only the first is Wakem's son, a young man that Maggie has promised her brother never to speak to again, and the second is her cousin's fiancee. Though grown up, Maggie is still impulsive and passionate, and she struggles to reconcile her feelings for these two young men with what she feels she owes both her brother and cousin.

"...life is very difficult! It seems right to me sometimes that we should follow our strongest feeling ... But I see there are things we must renounce in life; some of us must resign love. Many things are difficult and dark to me, but I see one thing quite clearly:  that I must not, cannot, seek my own happiness by sacrificing others."

In The Mill on the Floss, Eliot manages to chronicle two ordinary, rather provincial lives from childhood into adulthood and make them extraordinary.  Especially Maggie's. Though sad, her story is memorable and moving. And while I can't say that she's my favorite literary heroine, I will never forget her.

Maggie's destiny, then, is at present hidden, and we must wait for it to reveal itself like the course of an unmapped river; we only know that the river is full and rapid, and that for all rivers there is the same final home.

This is the last of my June rereads, so it's on to new books next week. 

Happy Reading!

Ethan Frome

Ethan Frome drove in silence ... he seemed a part of the mute melancholy landscape, an incarnation of its frozen woe, with all that was warm and sentient in him fast bound below the surface; but there was nothing unfriendly in his silence. I simply felt that he lived in a depth of moral isolation too remote for casual access, and I had the sense that his loneliness was not merely the result of his personal plight ... but had in it the profound accumulated cold of many Starkfield winters.

As much as I love Edith Wharton's writing is how much I didn't love Ethan Frome the first time I read it. Which is why I felt the need to give it a second chance. It's not a long novel, and there are really only three main characters:  Ethan Frome, Zeena, his grim and ailing wife whose "fault-finding was of the silent kind", and Mattie Silver, his wife's younger cousin whose coming to their house to help Zeena out brought "a bit of hopeful life (that) was like the lighting of a fire on a cold hearth" to Ethan's dreary existence. The harsh Massachusetts winter also plays an important role in this tragic tale.

Ethan's life is a series of misfortune, struggle, and bad luck. Even his marriage is a disappointing mistake. Only in Mattie does he glimpse a sympathetic companion and the hope of some future happiness. But Zeena's penchant for "complaints and troubles" makes even that dream impossible. And that leads to tragedy. As I reread this book last week, I felt only sympathy for Ethan Frome. He deserved better than what he got, but life can be hard and unfair. This is such a sad novel, but it's so beautifully written. And while it will never be my favorite, I do like it more than I did. Mostly because of Wharton's artistry and skill--her writing is so stylish and elegant--but also because this second time reading Ethan Frome helped me to appreciate it, and him, a little bit more.

Happy Rereading!