Not so bad after all...

Remember that post a long time ago about the Depressing Pregnancy. That it was stupid to get pregnant when you can't even provide for yourself? Well I guess that pregnancy had a purpose after all, cause if Rose of Sharon hadn't been pregnant, then she couldn't have...well anyway, I agreed with that post at the time, but now I take it back.
And even though it was helpful...ew

Not just another story....

GOW is rife with symbolism, themes, and motifs....flowers, the dead child, fallow fields...

Themes--when man rejects other humans, he rejects his own humanity
No man can exist without affecting mankind
Any others?

Motifs-- religion, rebirth, spring, seeds, martyrs and mothers-- What did you see?

And the moral---What is it?

DISAPPOINTING!!!

Why didn't the turtle come back?! This made me sad! Poor turtle....I wonder what happened to the poor little guy...was his parallel just dropped off after chapter 3, or did Steinbeck just forget about the turtle after that?

The end...

Looking back, would you say that Steinbeck's symbolism really helped the story or do you think it was just irrelevant nonsense?

Another Post about the Ending...

Does anyone think that Steinbeck meant to have an abrupt ending? Maybe to show that his main purpose was showing the general hardships of the time?

Dead Baby

Was anyone infuriated by the description of the dead baby:

"On a newspaper lay a blue shriveled little mummy" (603).

How awful.

Lazy ol' Steinbeck

Okay, so I thought Steinbeck had really good description and I really liked the story of the Joads. But as the book progressed, characters that weren't really developing just died or walked away. Then, the end gives no resolution to the 619 page book....
Do you think Steinbeck did it for some kind of effect or was he just lazy or had writer's block? Or some other reason?