Grapes of Wrath Read Along: Weeks 3 and 4

This week's Read-Along assignment: chapters 12-18 (inclusive) for week 3 and chapters 19-25 for week 4

Overall impression so far:  Bleak, and very soap-boxy, but the writing is beautiful and the characters are interesting. Ma Joad is awesome!

Specifics from this week:
I got behind in my reading, but am caught up now so am writing about  2 weeks of resding at once.

I am still thinking that the non-Joad chapters are a good break from the constant death and impending doom of the main storyline, but some of them are  boring and way to much like a propaganda film. I really liked the chapter about the camps that create a new society every night and then break down like a circus in the morning. the images were sad and beautiful, and kinda hopeful.

Ma Joad driving off the crazy religious woman who was scaring Rose of Sharon was a wonderful scene and I loved Ma's explanation that  God has bigger fish to fry than Rosasharn and she needs to get over herself.

Beautiful image:
"The eastern mountains were blue-black, and as he watched, the light stood up faintly behind them, colored at the mountain rims with a washed red, then growing colder, grater, darker, as it went up overhead, until at a place near the western horizon it merged with pure night. Down in the valley the earth was the lavender-gray of dawn." (p. 371)
If there was more of this kind of writing and less road kill I would be liking this book a lot more.