u/Infamous_Wave9878

he really showcased the hypocrisy of the times well and I’m honestly just pissed off now

Anyways I kinda felt like I dove into a painful past with this classic from the Victorian era

This is actually so rich, beautiful and transcendent idek. I actually felt like I had to get out sticky notes to mark things which admittedly I hardly do lol. I’ll dogear pages sometimes but I was like stunned frequently and just had to w this book. I feel like this found the transience and liquidity of meaning. Her prose kind of says you might be everything, and that is almost unbearable

I almost read it like an elegy for both the living and the dead or maybe for those in-between, all the ghosts that wander the earth

She’s always testing whether meaning can be honestly held by someone, and her prose is so precise and specific about the that inner way of looking out at the world. I think it rested the entire time in that in-between place between the physical world and our interpretation of it or what is beyond it, what we can extract from it even as it moves away from us or we move away from it or even if like Lucille all we want to extract is fitting in or presenting an image (opposite of Ruthie who doesn’t care she’s almost a living ghost, quiet and letting intensity wash over her at all points)

Sometimes I really started thinking about Keats and the concept of negative capability which is the capacity to remain in uncertainty and intensity without grasping for relief, which I think this asks of the reader. I also love that the intensity never feels contrived, it just feels like it has to happen, like it is inevitable

Anyways wow I’m gonna put an excerpt here cos nothing I can really say will accurately explain how I felt about this book.

“Imagine a Carthage sown with salt, and all the sowers gone, and the seeds lain however long in the earth, till there rise finally in vegetable profusion leaves and trees of rime and brine. What flowering would there be in such a garden? Light would force each salt calyx to open in prisms, and to fruit heavily with bright globes of water—peaches and grapes are little more than that, and where the world was salt there would be a greater need of slaking. For need can blossom into all the compensations it requires.

To crave and to have are as like as a thing and it’s shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know anything so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing—the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on one’s hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again. Though we dream and hardly know it, longing, like an angel, fosters us, smooths our hair, brings us wild strawberries.”

This is actually so rich, beautiful and transcendent idek. I actually felt like I had to get out sticky notes to mark things which admittedly I hardly do lol. I’ll dogear pages sometimes but I was like stunned frequently and just had to w this book. I feel like this found the transience and liquidity of meaning. Her prose kind of says you might be everything, and that is almost unbearable.

I almost read it like an elegy for both the living and the dead or maybe for those in-between, all the ghosts that wander the earth

She’s always testing whether meaning can be honestly held, and her prose is so precise and specific about the interior and that inner way of looking out at the world. I think it rested the entire time in that in-between place between the physical world and our interpretation of it or what is beyond it, what we can extract from it even as it moves away from us or we move away from it or even if like Lucille all we want to extract is fitting in or presenting an image (opposite of Ruthie who doesn’t care she’s almost a living ghost, quiet and letting intensity wash over her at all points)

Sometimes I really started thinking about Keats and the concept of negative capability which is the capacity to remain in uncertainty and intensity without grasping for relief, which I think this asks of the reader. I also love that the intensity never feels contrived, it just feels like it has to happen, like it is inevitable

Anyways wow I’m gonna put an excerpt here cos nothing I can really say will accurately explain how I felt about this book.

“Imagine a Carthage sown with salt, and all the sowers gone, and the seeds lain however long in the earth, till there rise finally in vegetable profusion leaves and trees of rime and brine. What flowering would there be in such a garden? Light would force each salt calyx to open in prisms, and to fruit heavily with bright globes of water—peaches and grapes are little more than that, and where the world was salt there would be a greater need of slaking. For need can blossom into all the compensations it requires.

To crave and to have are as like as a thing and it’s shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know anything so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing—the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on one’s hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again. Though we dream and hardly know it, longing, like an angel, fosters us, smooths our hair, brings us wild strawberries.”

I really loved it but I do have some criticism that I can’t shake. This was painful for me to read. It is definitely a poignant reflection of its time. This includes all the misogyny and patriarchal qualities that that time period possessed.

The portrayal of the native Americans as lazy in the beginning descriptions was a colonizer’s perspective and I thought it was prejudiced

The women were hard for me to grapple with. It seems to me that there is a lot of sympathy in the writing for the humanity of the men no matter what wrong they do. But not for the women unless they did their “duty” as women or were subservient to the men in some way. Cathy, obviously, is the biggest portrayal of what I’m talking about. She’s evil without ever being humanized. I know she is meant to represent lilith/satan/the serpent/human darkness and is a sociopath but it’s the way it was gone about that troubled me

I kinda saw Cathy as a tragic figure. She’s rebelling against all these roles people want to place her in and committing all these awful crimes and still people can’t see her and want to place her in these roles. The part that really icked me out was when Adam goes to confront her and he can finally see her because she’s aged? And is no longer as beautiful? I mean he stares at her fat ankles and wrinkled hands and is out of her spell. That made it feel as if she was reduced to how she looked, even if the reduction was of manipulativeness and conniving qualities. But then you have Charles who also almost commits murder but the choice is to lessen his crime by not having him go through with it and then the letters that give us a glimpse into his humanity. Also Cal takes the whole book to give into his own cruelty and we see him grappling w it which we never see w Cathy. I also had trouble thinking Cathy was evil for not wanting a family, she always told Adam she didn’t want a family. She committed other evil things that I do think make her evil like burning her family but idk there’s a lot to unpack within her character and I have conflicted feelings.

I think it’s fine to have a sociopathic woman as a character but I had a lot of trouble with her not wanting a family or kids and wanting to escape to be a whore and have charge over herself being demonized as a causality of her being representative of darkness and depicted as such

I could write a whole essay on this lol

There’s also a passage that seems really reactive to the Cold War and couples totalitarianism with collectivism.

Of things I did like/love:

-Steinbeck really has a beautiful way with words. There were moments that just struck me in one paragraph and made me ache for these like when Dessie goes to live with Tom because she’s heartbroken over some guy and he leaves all these welcome home signs.

-I was completely gripped the whole story. Not one part made me lose interest and I think that’s a testament to the story telling here.

-I said earlier that it’s a poignant reflection of its time. I mentioned the ways in which this troubled me with the story but I think there are many ways it serves it as well. I felt nostalgic for my history as an American even though I didn’t exist yet. When Adam is a vagrant wandering around.. the descriptions of Cathy on the porch, they buying the automobile, the farming, the hope.. I just felt sooo nostalgic for a place I was raised in but a time period I didn’t exist in if that makes sense.

-There’s all these little details that just struck me. Even the superstition about taking the bones out of a name if it doesn’t fit them and thus why people have nicknames it’s if they were given the wrong name

-a lot of the characters were so rich and beautifully written that I missed them as soon as I close the book. I loved Samuel, Lee, abra, Adam, Aron, Dessie, even Charles and Cal

-there are a lot of moments of great insight. Like describing eyes as long tunnels to look out from deep within you, I’ve felt the exact same thing lol. Like my soul is trying to peer out. Or loads of things Lee and Samuel say or other characters or about grief or just humanity and life in general. Plenty of dog eared pages I’ll tell you that.

Most of my critique could be chalked up to the time period it was written in, so I’m curious what others think. I definitely don’t believe we should erase or “cancel” things that are part of our history because how would we ever reflect on them???? I hate when people come to classics with that approach so I hope it doesn’t seem like I am. And literature is, I think, deeply reflective of history and ideas and political and generally what’s going on at the time.

But I also think we need to be able to discuss them without thinking a critique means something is bad. Or love for something means it’s good. Or any such term that reduces things to smaller than what they are. So I think both appreciation/admiration for the writing and critique is warranted. With this I think it’s a masterful piece of literature, great, but also has things to be examined with a critical and/or analytical eye

I’m so sorry yall i know what it sounds like

I’m only four chapters in but I teared up lowkey

Has anyone read this? Sooooo goooood

SPOILER:

I’m at the part where Adam gives his stepmom all these lil gifts and then he gets beat tf up by his brother and she says you have to know him because she thinks his brother is giving him the little gifts. That really made me wanna cry dude. I can’t believe I thought I didn’t like Steinbeck I think I read of mice and men too early bc I just remember not liking it (this was in middle school)