Life experience creates a very different book from the one I read in undergraduate days. This time I understood the social commentary, a very skillfully done commentary. The interlude chapters describing the times made it so clear that the challenges were not only personal ones to the Joad family. The interludes had an epic quality rather than a didactic one.

The major characters were likable, flaws and all. The "truck" was almost a character. I am not clear "whose" story it is. At first I thought Tom's, but he disappeared early. Should Ma have appeared earlier for it to be her story? Rose of Sharon's? She is there at the end. (I don't think the change in her character was adequately motivated, but that is a small flaw in an otherwise good novel.) Is it the story of the mother role? I almost think I remember the professor saying something about the role being passed from Ma to Rose of Sharon. (It was, of course, a very stereotypical view of women's role in holding the family together, a role questioned now more than when Steinbeck was writing.) Perhaps it is wrong to look for it to be one person's story.