Exemplifying John Steinbeck’s brilliance through the use of his quotes

“ What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.”

Steinbeck employs a level of poetic illustration that brilliantly captures not only the time in which the protagonists go about their story, but also the setting upon which they do so. The imagery is vivid, the tone is genuine, and the atmosphere is depicted in flawless detail. It doesn’t take many pages of the Grapes of Wrath to evidence Steinbeck’s tactful use of imagery.

“A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you
control it.”

The occasional lack of antagonists and, in some cases, a typical plotline trajectory, offers a refreshing, spirited and wholly unpredictable experience for the reader. East of Eden, for instance, presents a certainly flawed protagonist that we can’t help but support. The Red Pony presents an atypical story with no real antagonist except, possibly, the protagonist himself and offers he smooth telling of a plot that has no real sense of development — simply the telling of a story, no more no less.

“No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.”