The Greatness of Grapes

The Grapes of Wrath is my favorite book of all time. It is everything that I look for in a story. I want a gripping story of characters I can see and feel. I want sentences and paragraphs I can sink my teeth into. I want a world so fully developed that every part of the story feels right at home. I want to walk away from the story satisfied in my mind, my heart, and my soul. The story of Tom Joad and his family does all that for me.

I was struck on this reading by the simplicity of the story. To trace the Joad's odyssey from beginning to end is to draw a direct line with only 15 or so dots. There are no complicated plot twists, no big reveals, and very few surprises, and yet the whole thing is riveting! The book does not slump or slow at any point for me, even when I know what is going to happen.

And to take that simple story and interlace it with the larger story of all the migrants surrounding the Joads was brilliantly done. The Joads and their trials always exist in a context that is as beautifully written as the main narrative.

It is sad that this book is wasted on high schoolers who are looking to avoid reading it in the first place. The book is taught, I think, for wonderful reasons: it's a classic, it's beautifully written, it allows students to learn about the dust bowl and the depression. But how can your typical high schooler appreciate the language, the dialogue, the details, its genre as a protest novel? I would say that it can't hurt to expose them to this book, except most of us walk around groaning at the title, at this piece of capital-L Literature precisely because it was forced on us. And what high schooler didn't get sick of talking about the turtle in chapter three?

For me, Grapes of Wrath is a perfect book, and I couldn't be happier that it made this list.