More wisdom from Steinbeck
"Maybe we can start again, in the new rich land - in California, where the fruit grows. We'll start over.""But you can't start. Only a baby can start. You and me - why we're all that's been. The anger of a moment, the thousand pictures, that's us. This land, this red land, is us; and the flood years and the dust years and the drought years are us. We can't start again. The bitterness we sold to the junk man - he got it all right, but we have it still. And when the owner men told us to go, that's us; and when the tractor hit the house, that's until we're dead. To California or any place - every one a drum-major leading a parade of hurts, marching with our bitterness. And some day - the armies of bitterness will all be going the same way. And they'll all walk together, and there'll be a dead terror from it."
Here Steinbeck gets to the very heart and soul of those farmers that were kicked off their land. He has an amazing ability to perfectly convey the emotional disaster that is poverty, eviction and human suffering. His amazing juxtaposition of sorts - putting the human misery of a family, their living, breathing memories and lives up against the economic machine that is capitalism - is so crystal clear in this entire novel.
And below we have a beautiful evocation of the symbolism of Route 66 in American culture. How many pigrims travelled down that highway? How many refugees? How many people searching for a better life? Is Route 66 the road of hope? Of desperation?
"66 is the path of a people in flight, refugees from dust and shrinking land, from the thunder of tractors and shrinking ownership, from the desert's slow northward invasion, from the twisting winds that howl up out of Texas, from the floods that bring no richness to the land and steal what little richness is there. From all of these the people are in flight, and they come into 66 from the tributary side roads, from the wagon tracks and the rutted country roads. 66 is the mother road, the road of flight."
Labels: literature
posted by LX @ 11:02 PM
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