Grapes of Wrath

Yes, I only gave this four balls of yarn. Why? Because it is really sad. I've read this book before and honestly I think I enjoyed it more the first time. It was hard for me to read this time around.

It's a story about a family, the Joads, whose farm is taken away from them and they are forced to move on. They hear that workers are needed in California and how great it is there so they plan on leaving. When they start out there are 13 of them on their truck. Along the way they loose four of their family to death or other ways. Two of the family members are Rose of Sharon and her husband Connie, and Rose of Sharon is pregnant. Connie is one of the people they loose along the way, he wandered off and never came back. After many days on the road they finally make it to California. Along the way they meet people who are leaving California and warn them that there are too many workers and not enough work and that the wages that are being paid are not enough to feed a family on. They discover this for themselves and can't find work. For part of the time they live in this great government run camp where they have hot water and toilets and people are kind to them, but they run out of money and there is no work so they have to move on.

Lots of sadness follows them and they try to stick together as a family, but can't. One son, Tom, who was just released from prison for killing a man at the beginning of the story is hiding out because he killed a man to defend his friend. To keep his family safe he runs off. Their other son, Al, meets a girl and decides to marry her and he wants to work in a garage, which let me sidetrack a little bit here. This is something I thought a lot while reading this book. Why don't they go to the city and find a job in a garage. Both Tom and Al are really good with fixing cars, they both could get a job there I'm sure and have some money come in. It wasn't until the end that I realized that these people were farmers and working on the land was the only thing they knew to do, that's why.

Alright, back to the story. In the end, well I don't want to tell you the end. You'll have to read it for yourself and if you have read it, you understand, don't you.

One thing that stuck out to me that didn't before, was that these people were people. Let me explain. The first time I read it I think they were just characters and I didn't connect with them, this time I saw them as people. I could almost see their faces and realized that they were just trying to do what was best for their family. They were treated worse than the animals by the people in California (I do understand why, in a way) but they were just people trying to make their way. I try to imagine if that were me and my family and I'm amazed by the strength that their mother showed through all their trials, trying to feed their family, her daughter being pregnant and her husband running off, trying to find a place to live. Just trying to find the basic necessities in life. I feel that sometimes I take these things for granted. Or I drive by homes that are bigger than mine and I think "my life would be better if I lived there" (which it wouldn't be because then I would have to clean more!). I have everything I need right here in my home, to take care of my family. We have a roof over our heads, food in the fridge and cupboards, clothes to wear, a heater in the winter and a cooler in the summer. I think sometimes we focus on the fancy things that we don't NEED, we just WANT. One thing the Joad family had, thanks to their mother, was love for each other and I think that is what got them through the trials.

This book has made me realize how blessed I am. Yes, I don't have a large closet full of designer clothes, or a big fancy car, or a fancy phone that I can get on the internet with or listen to music. I don't even own an iPad! But I have what I need and that's good enough.

The Yearling

This book has made me think harder than probably any of the Pulitzer books I've read. That seems strange, doesn't it? A simple book like The Yearling hardly seems thought provoking but for me it was. It is a simple story about a young boy, Jody, who is lonely for companionship and longs to have a pet of some sort. After his father, Penny, shoots a doe, Jody rescues a fawn and makes it his own. He loves the fawn and it is his constant companion. The fawn grows up and is no long a yearling and begins to destroy the crops that Jody's family relies on for food and money so he is told he needs to go out and shoot it. Jody can't and so his mother tries and misses and just wounds him so Jody has to put the deer out of his misery. Jody runs away and grows up himself. At the end his father tells Jody that he is no longer a yearling himself but grew up while he was away.

The story is good, but it's not the part that got me thinking, it's the reading of their everyday life. Jody and his father go hunting a lot to get meat for the family. They talk a lot about what they eat on a daily basis and how they gain it and how they preserve it for the winter months. As I read along, not only did I have the desire to go out and shoot a deer and then smoke the meat, but I wondered is this how life should really be? They worked hard and they had to in order to survive. The planting and plowing were a necessity and in the end when they had a good crop it was a reward for all their hard work. They were together, Jody learned good work ethics, he learned right and wrong in the fields, and the love that he and his father had for each other was so strong because they spent this time together. Again, I wonder is this really the way life should be?

I'd like to teach my children good work ethic but I don't know how. We have a small garden ,but we don't rely on it and I can hardly get my kids to stay out there to help me weed. Maybe it's bad parenting but I can't seem to get them to want to work and to realize the importance of it. Maybe we should have a week or a month where we only rely on our garden to survive, and then we'd all die of starvation probably, I'm not that good of a gardener. I wish that my family could be together all the time, that my kids could run off in to the woods and explore and play. I wish that I spent my day doing things that my family needed so that they could be healthy and live comfortably, all with my hands. This would be a good life.

I spent a lot of time wondering this while reading this book, and decided that I'm probably romanticizing these ideas in my mind. That life would be hard and dirty. And I realize I do like to be able to run to the grocery store and buy some marinated artichoke hearts if I wanted to. I like to be able to run my dishwasher and have clean dishes and my washing machine and dryer and have clean clothes. I also like having all my teeth (something Jody's mom couldn't claim). So how do I find the balance? I guess that's something I'll have to spend my life trying to find. In the meantime, I'll dream of a life in the woods, living off the land, and working my fingers to the bone while I eat some marinated artichoke hearts.