Grapes of Wrath is Steinbeck's Masterpiece

I've always viewed Steinbeck as Hemingway 2.0. Where Hemingway meanders through panorama, Steinbeck sets forth, always providing direction and purpose. His prose is slightly less conducive, but still projects enough imagery to satisfy Hemingway's myrmidons. The themes are lucid, Steinbeck telling the story as if he'd heard it somewhere, rather than as if present-----the resultant unbias works exponentially better.

Grapes of Wrath, considered by many (including myself) to be Steinbeck's magnum opus, is a pellucid capture of American migrants during the 1930s. We mostly follow the Joads, a family of indigent farmers, forced to move west because of the Great Plains' draught. We first meet Tom Joad, just released from an four-year sentence Oklahoma State Prison for 2nd degree murder. If Grapes has a hero, it is surely Tom-----he is virtuous at his best and rambunctious and his worst, constantly inwardly condemning the government's backwards motives and the greed of penurious farmers. Ex-preacher Jim Casy is arguably his mentor-----Casy abandoned his practice because of a partiality to tartuffery, but still incessantly spouts off discursive homilies about God and sin.. We like these characters. That's a good thing.

We meet the Joads, and our affinity expands. There's the obstreperous but venerable Ma; the assiduous and honest Pa; Grampa and Granma competitively a-scream an' a-holler all day but clearly love each other. Sibling Rose of Sharon is naive but good-willing. One of Steinbeck's greatest virtues is his ability to paint characters through language-----the dialect of rural Oklahoman families is best understood when vocalized, but retains its acumen even when viewed analytically. Here's a humorous but frank selection of Grapes' dialogue:

Al asked importantly, "What's the matter?"
"Well, she jus' won't run. Starts an' farts an' stops. In a minute she'll start again, an' then 'fore you can git her goin', she peters out again."
"Run a minute an' then dies?"
"Yes, sir. An' I can't keep her a-goin' no matter how much gas I give her. Got worse an' worse, an' now I cain't get her a-movin' a-tall."

Just from this excerpt, nearly void of narration, we can reasonably infer the appearance, demeanor and intonation of the characters. There's nothing exaggerative; Steinbeck is fair to his characters; you might even say he's in love with them. Conversations are occasionally difficult to follow, but we can only blame ourselves for this. What are the characters supposed to do? Stop and elaborate in aristocratic English?

Eventually the Joads reach California, which Steinbeck vividly portrays:

The spring is beautiful in California. Valleys in which the fruit blossoms are fragrant pink and white waters in a shallow sea...And then the leaves break out on the trees, and the petals drop from the fruit trees and carpet the earth with pink and white.

Unfortunately, this haven's appearance provides no foreshadowing, and our author follows the miasma which pervades nearly all of his novels. Steinbeck, averting preachiness, exposes corporate and government fraud, and it's only wise to assume he'd know of it, having been born and raised in Salinas, California. The characters have difficulty finding employment, some of their jobs provided for repugnant reasons. It's rather morbid, the things local deputies do; how nearly half of our favorite characters, some of them vivacious and auspicious, die off.

Grapes of Wrath's ability to serve as a history lesson, in which we nearly become an integral part of the story, is what makes it Steinbeck's masterpiece. It concludes in typical optimistic-unavailed-cliffhanger Steinbeck fashion, leaving us, as always (the only exception being the nonfictional Travels with Charley), closing the book and thinking, "Wow, that was a really good book. But I dunno about the last sentence." And we'll never stop thinking it, either.

Rating: A