The Grapes of Wrath

[여국현]

리테의 2016년 마지막 작품, Thr Grapes of Wrath.

석사 과정 2학기 발제 작품이었고, 몹시 공들여 발제문을 만들고 읽었던 기억이 났다. 리테에서도 두세 번을 읽었고 이번에 다시 읽었던 마지막 날, 정리하는 시간에 그때 발제문을 조금 정리해 함께 작품을 마무리했다. 새로웠다.

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"I wouldn't pray for a ol' fella that's dead...if I was to pray, it'd be for the folks hat don't know which way to turn." (197)

"Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, the one will lif' up his fellow, but woe to him that is alone when he felleth, for he hath not another to help him up." (570)

"I'm learnin' one thing good," she said. " Learnin' it all a time, ever' day. If you're in trouble or hurt or need--go to poor people. They're the only ones that'll help--he only ones." (513)

"They'd a time of change, an' when that comes, dyin' is a piece of all dyin', and bearing is a piece of all bearin', an' bearn' and dyin' is two pieces of the same thing. An'then things ain't lonely any more, Rosasharn. I wish I would tell you so you'd know, but I can't." And her voice was so soft, so full of love, that tears crowded into Rose of Sharon's eyes, and flowed over her eyes and blinded her. (286)

"Man, he lives in jerks--baby born an' a man dies, an that's a jerk--gets a farm an'd loses his farm, an' that's a jerk. Woman, it's all one flow, like a stream, little eddies, little waterfalls, but the river, it goes right on. Woman looks at it like that. We ain't gonna die out. People is goin' on--changin' a little, maybe, but goin' right on." (571)

And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to thee screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quicklime, watch the mountains of oranges slip down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In there souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage. (477)