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John SteinbeckA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
“[T]he Gabilan Mountains to the east of the valley were light gray mountains full of sun and loveliness and a kind of invitation, so that you wanted to climb into their warm foothills almost as you want to climb into the lap of a beloved mother. They were beckoning mountains with a brown grass love. The Santa Lucias stood up against the sky to west and kept the valley from the open sea, and they were dark and brooding—unfriendly and dangerous.”
“When a child first catches adults out—when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just—his world falls into panic desolation.”
Here, Steinbeck foreshadows potential conflict between parents and children, while alluding to the love that informs faith. Adam later discovers just how flawed his father really is. After this initial revelation about his father, Adam realizes that he must largely fend for himself in the world—that his father can’t save him from everything.
“Charles had one great quality. He was never sorry—ever. He never mentioned the beating, apparently never thought of it again. But Adam made very sure that he didn’t win again…He had always felt the danger in his brother, but now he understood that he must never win unless he was prepared to kill Charles. Charles was not sorry. He had very simply fulfilled himself.”
This passage solidifies Charles’s character as inherently violent. Steinbeck wants to convey the possibility that Charles’s personality is unchangeable and natural—that he can’t help his outbursts of violence and that they help him deal with his world.
By John Steinbeck
Cannery Row
Cannery Row
John Steinbeck
Flight
Flight
John Steinbeck
In Dubious Battle
In Dubious Battle
John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men
Of Mice and Men
John Steinbeck
Sweet Thursday
Sweet Thursday
John Steinbeck
The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights
The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights
John Steinbeck
The Chrysanthemums
The Chrysanthemums
John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck
The Harvest Gypsies
The Harvest Gypsies: On the Road to the Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck
The Log From The Sea of Cortez
The Log From The Sea of Cortez
John Steinbeck
The Long Valley
The Long Valley
John Steinbeck
The Moon Is Down
The Moon Is Down
John Steinbeck
The Pearl
The Pearl
John Steinbeck
The Red Pony
The Red Pony
John Steinbeck
The Wayward Bus
The Wayward Bus
John Steinbeck
The Winter Of Our Discontent
The Winter Of Our Discontent
John Steinbeck
To a God Unknown
To a God Unknown
John Steinbeck
Tortilla Flat
Tortilla Flat
John Steinbeck
Travels With Charley
Travels With Charley
John Steinbeck
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