#3 The Grapes of Wrath

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Wow! Just wow! It's hard for me to imagine a more beautifully sculpted masterpiece. I love how Steinbeck goes between the Joad-family narrative and these cinematic scenes of what the experience was like on a more general level. Everything is culminated beautifully in the ending. The final chapter, the final scene, the final sentence, the final two words are just absolutely perfect.

I've said too much already. I'm sure that everything that can be said about this book has already been said. I'll just put in a line or two that stuck with me and be done.

If you who own the things people must have could understand
this, you might preserve yourself. If you could separate
causes from results, if you could know Paine, Marx,
Jefferson, Lenin, were results, not causes, you might survive.
But that you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezes
you forever into "I," and cuts you off forever from the "we."

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