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The Power of The Grapes of Wrath
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Steinbeck has become one of my favorite writers — for the love he has for his characters, the loveliness of his language, and the clear-eyed conviction with which he writes. Originally, I failed to see the beauty in Steinbeck’s people, though it is plainly there. Perhaps I hadn’t seen enough of the world myself, yet. There was a lot I didn’t understand about people.
What Steinbeck does so well is to show people’s struggle for simple human decency in the face of meanness and ignorance. He toes a fine line, but there is no romance or pity in his work. He loves his characters, warts and all, as an author must. He shows those who polite society might find wretched and despicable to have real humanity. The bums and whores of Cannery Row. The lost imbecile of Of Mice and Men.
Steinbeck’s Language
Easygoing and plainspoken for the most part, Steinbeck’s language is richly evocative. Indeed, his example shows these qualities are not at odds, but, in fact, related. He is also a master of pacing. In his passages of description, he never gets bogged down in detail, never lets the eye linger too long.
Take a look at the opening of Chapter 15 of The Grapes of Wrath, a description of a roadside hamburger stand. The language is precise, stopping here and there to dwell in more detail where necessary, but always marching onward. As the camera-eye moves about the scene, it is not wandering aimlessly, seeing whatever falls in its line of vision; it is moving purposefully, taking in a whole scene.
Part of this passage’s success comes from its use of repeating sounds to maintain continuity as the eye moves from object to object — for example, the repetition of “bar,” “nickel,” “candy,” “seltzer,” and “Coca-Cola” in the first paragraph, and “pot” and “roast” in the third paragraph. If you scan these opening paragraphs as poetry, you’ll find a pattern of stresses that serves to slow down the rhythm in key places to that of a sacred chant. These formal techniques are characteristic of Steinbeck. He uses them throughout the novel to tell the story in the form of a sacred myth.
In addition, Steinbeck also has a perfectly tuned ear for the rhythms of American speech and idiom. He renders the simple beauty of American dialects so well that his writings serve as a declaration of their value.
