Book Review: Grapes of Wrath

John Steinbeck wrote the Grapes of Wrath to tell about America during the reconstruction from the Great Depression. Steinbeck gathers up all of the evils and troubles in America and puts them into this book. He talks about the filthy children, the labor conditions, and the desperate need for everything in this time of history. He talks about the move to the west and makes it more realistic with all the dialect in the book. This book is extremely popular, and there are movies and plays that were made because of this book.

Born in Salinas, California, in 1902, Steinbeck had amble opportunity to succeed in being a writer with his mother being a teacher, Olive Steinbeck, and his father being the County Treasurer, John Steinbeck Sr. His mom helped him along with his love of reading and writing. After high school, he attended Stanford University with an English major. Not long after college, he married his first wife, Carol Henning. His first book to make him famous was Tortilla Flat, and then he later wrote Grapes of Wrath where he won the Pulitzer Prize. John Steinbeck ended up winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. Steinbeck had a hard time at first when trying to make some of his books popular so he pretty much kept to himself as a person. Steinbeck died in 1968 and had his ashes put into the Garden of Memories Cemetery.

I really like this books writing style because it uses a lot of dialogue to make it very easy for the reader to picture what is actually going on rather than just reading through the information. Steinbeck is very informative in this book to tell the reader about that time in history. He makes everything flow together in chronological order to help the plot. I like this book so much that I think many more people should read it no matter your age. It will tell everyone about the recovery period from the Great Depression. This book shows that no matter how hard things are families will stick together and pull through, which is rather inspiring for everyone.

http://www.steinbeck.org/Grapes.html
This website has a small summary of the book and tells about the awards that it received.
http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~stephan/Steinbeck/grapes.html
This is a site that covers the complete book chapter by chapter, very informative.
http://www.loa.org/volume.jsp?RequestID=12&section=reviews
This webpage talks about the dilemmas Steinbeck had with the public when he published this book.
http://www.steinbeck.org/Bio.html
This site talks about John Steinbeck’s life and the books that he has written.