Tuesday, January 24

A little bit of literature

“They spoke of their tragedies: Had a brother Charley, hair as yella as corn, an’ him a growed man. Played the ’cordeen nice too. He was harrowin’ one day an’ he went up to clear his lines. Well, a rattlesnake buzzed an’ them horses bolted an’ the harrow went over Charley, an’ the points dug into his guts an’ his stomach, an’ they pulled his face off an’—God Almighty!

They spoke of the future: Wonder what it’s like out there? Well, the pitchers sure do look nice. I seen one where it’s hot an’ fine, an’ walnut trees an’ berries; an’ right behind, close as a mule’s ass to his withers, they’s a tall up mountain covered with snow. That was a pretty thing to see.

If we can get work it’ll be fine. Won’t have no cold in the winter. Kids won’t freeze on the way to school. I’m gonna take care my kids don’t miss no more school. I can read good, but it ain’t no pleasure to me like with a fella that’s used to it.”

Vocabulary build-up

The transitive verb harrowing means, in this context, “to break up and level (soil or land) with a harrow.” A harrow is “a farm implement consisting of a heavy frame with sharp teeth or upright disks, used to break up and even off plowed ground.”

The intransitive verb bolt means “to move or spring suddenly; to start suddenly and run away.”

Comments

Descended from migrants that chased the American Dream in the West coast, John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California, in 1902. He grew up in a fertile agricultural valley about twenty-five miles from the Pacific Coast – and both valley and coast would serve as settings for some of his best fiction. Steinbeck has been interested in writing as long as he can remember. But he wrote hard for almost fifteen years before he had his first success. He has always written more than he has published. Indeed, he destroyed two full-length novels before “Cup of Gold”, his first published novel, made its appearance in 1929. After that, however, he became a prolific and successful writer. Curiously, although many of Steinbeck's works are required reading in American high schools, he is also one of the ten most frequently banned authors due to his acute writing style. In this context, “The grapes of wrath”, a Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression, is a book that galvanized and sometimes outraged millions of readers. The novel tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family (the Joads) driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. Steinbeck’s powerful landmark novel is perhaps the most American of American Classics.