I still stand by my opinion that the ending was bad. I do enjoy the freedom that Steinbeck gave me to imagine my own ending (and I can think of many endings; most of them sad, depressing endings, but the book was about the Great Depression and not everybody had a happy ending), but even after hearing some of my classmates opinions I still do not like the ending. It was not what I was expecting, which I normally enjoy, but this ending was random and did not give me any closure on the characters.
The whole common man hero from the Modernism period is not my favorite type of hero. I prefer epic heroes to average Joe heroes, as I stated during the book chat. In my mind and in my reckoning Tom Joad is not a hero. He made morally correct choices, was in the right place at the right time, and put his family in mind when he made decisions, not just himself. Those characteristics are for any character that is a good person. Everyone should think of others before themselves and choose not to fight first, talk later. Those characteristics shouldn't make Tom a hero. If I lived during the Great Depression I might think differently, and endorse Tom as a hero. But as that is not the case, I think that Ma is more of a hero than Tom. She led the family when Pa wasn't up to it (and she pushed him to lead the family, not just take all of his former glory and run with it) and was proud of them for their accomplishments and tried to make sure everyone was presentable and proud of themselves. That to me are heroic characteristics.
I thought that this web chat was the best out of the two because of the amount of discussion and differing opinions that everyone brought to the table. The first time there was less people, but I still learned some different things and was exposed to differing thoughts than what I had previously had. I enjoyed both web chats and am happy that you hosted them Mr. Langley as I took many new thoughts and facts away from both.
Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Penguin, 2006. Print.
No comments:
Post a Comment