Grapes of Wrath: Bad grammar or good book?

[Subservient Nonentity]

Well... in my English class we are reading the novel Grapes of Wrath. It is the story of a family forced to move to California during the Great Depression. The story 'captures the imagery and lifestyle' of people during that particular era. It also captures the diction of people during that particular era. The plot is nice enough... but the grammar irks me to no end.  

[[Joan De Arc]]

Maybe it does that on purpose, like "Lord of the Flies"?  

[Subservient Nonentity]

I must admit that I have never read Lord of the Flies, but Grapes of Wrath does intend all of the atrocious grammar. The book captures the life of the poorly educated people of the 1930's. Sadly, their grammar was captured as well.

The grammar of the book itself was fine, but the characters' grammar was awful.  

[Patron with a Mission]

To me, the grammar explains the way the characters live, and it also adds to the theme of the story, but this is just my humble opinion.

Basically, it shows just how uneducated they were, and it adds to their ignorance as the story goes along, and it shows how their normal lives "break down," in a sense, from the normal farm life they had.  

[ChibiStarlet]

Again, a humbe opinion, but I think that it adds something to the character. Part of developing characters is giving them different speech patterns to represent them--just like people don't all talk the same, characters shouldn't all sound the same either. I think it does a really good job of capturing those characters and the way they lived back then...and so somehow I'm able to overlook the grammar issues for the literature. =)  

[Punkghoul]

I agree with Chibi Starlet. While the grammar of the characters is atrocious, it develops WHO they are. It captures the essence of the people. So I too am able to overlook grammar issues for the literature.  

[merry go-round sex]

John Steinbeck used that same bad grammar for a lot of his books, not just the Grapes of Wrath.

Both Of Mice and Men and Tortilla Flats have pretty horrible character grammar.  

[Subservient Nonentity]

I understand that the grammar was used so portray the ignorance of people in that family/era. I was wondering if the grammar irked anyone else. gonk  

[FRUiTFLY]

I had to read Angela's Ashes for English class.
Frank McCourt does not use a quotation mark once throughout the entire story.
Characters talking is one thing. But when the author can't quote something correctly, that's sad.
Having trouble reading your book?

 

[Subservient Nonentity]

Yes. Yes, I am having much trouble reading my book. I want to crack out a red pen and correct everything.

*le sigh* I suppose that ignorance can be bliss at times.

sweatdrop I hope I'm not coming off as narrow-minded. I'm sure that if someone were to speak to me with such grammar, I wouldn't mind as much, because reading grammar/diction is completely different from people speaking. Besides, this sort of grammar and diction was simply the norm back in that era.


P.S.
I'm extremely tired at the moment, so my logic might not be crystal. Try to follow my thoughts... however jumbled they may seem.  

[Zee Zee Top]

I had the same problem with the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I had to read it for an English class. It was such a pain to read. I never finished it actually... Thank God we only had to do the project on eight chapters out of the book! I would have cracked before finishing it.  

[CristoVII]

I just read a few excerpts on it. True, it's supposed to be about uneducated people so the deliberate grammar mistakes are tolerable. However, this was my reaction when I first read an excerpt on it before fully understanding what the book was about. Now that I realized what I was about to say about a fairly reasonable book, I feel like an idiot. I'm actually sure some of you will find my first misunderstanding amusing (myself included).

The Mad Side Of Me

What the hell? This passed off for a book? This won a f--king Pulitzer Prize? Let's recap.

Excerpt

The water was six inches deep in the car before the flood spread evenly over teh embankment and moved into the cotton field on the other side.

"Teh"? "Embankment"? They pronounce "eat" as "et"? People say "I knowed"? These may be uneducated people, but even the third-person, non-dialogue views are written in misspellings! Was Steinbeck drunk, or high, or something? This might be a book written in 1939, but this is really just intolerable! There was more typos in a single excerpt than I can count until I hunt them all down.

Excuse me if I happened to offend anybody.  

[s0prano42_x3]

subservient_x_nonentity

Well... in my English class we are reading the novel Grapes of Wrath. It is the story of a family forced to move to California during the Great Depression. The story 'captures the imagery and lifestyle' of people during that particular era. It also captures the diction of people during that particular era. The plot is nice enough... but the grammar irks me to no end.

Well... I think if the grammar was all correct in that book, it would lose some of the effect the author wants to have on the reader.

Our school just did the play version of that book... I didn't get to go see it, though... I heard it was good. cool  

[MyOwnBestCritic]

It wasn't until very recently that proper spelling and grammar were enforced rigorously in the publishing industry. If the bad grammar could be corrected, it might not be the same book anymore, but it would be much easier to read. The only thing I DON'T suggest is translating it into 1337 or txt-tlk. Bad idea~  

[Ksenia Sergeevina]

I think John Steinback's dialect really added to the story, but then again he's my favorite author so I'm bias.