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?

The Ending

So, the ending... What did everyone think? I yelled when I finished the book. The book was really good though. Probably the best i have read for a school project in a long time.

Intense

Did anyone else think that all of the crops being destroyed and the rain and all that was a parallel between the migrants and their emotions toward the farmers? That whole quote about the grapes....but did it mean anger, or despair?

So what does everyone think of the ending? There are a lot of intense biblical symbols involved....like Jim Casy, Rose of Sharon and the dying man (which was kind of gross), and even the dead baby. I know this wasn't the whole point for these parts in the story, he really wanted to show the hardships that the migrants were facing and represent them in a powerful way, and I recognize that Moses was sent down the river in a basket, but what is the point for the baby? Salvation or a message I guess...?