Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Grapes of wrath post II

The book goes from small chapters with different styles and different stories back to the main story of the family heading West in the great exodus to escape the dying land.

You really want the family to make it but you start to get hints that Route 66 is a place of despair for some of the travellers and that even when and if they get to California the hand bills proclaiming a land of milk and honey might not turn out to be true.

Bullet points between pages 76 - 154

* The family heads off with the preacher aboard and the family weighed down with possessions and fear

* The first casualty is the dog that runs into the Highway and gets killed

* The next is Grampa who has a stroke and is buried by the side of the road

* the Joads meet up and combine forces with the Wilson's from Kansas and head off in convoy to lighten the load on the truck

* The car breaks down giving first Tom and Casy the chance to talk about how the mass migration mean there is something wrong with the country and then the brothers Tom and Al head off for a spare part and get a chance to talk about his prison time and his philosophy about the future

Will try to get back to 100 pages a day tomorrow if this heat cools down in London and the trains become more bearable. All you want now is for the family to make it but somehow you just sense that is not going to happen...