Note: I had to delete my previous thread from a few minutes as the mods said they can't change the title and I realized the title was not reflective of the content, so I'm sorry about that and posters who already contributed, but I was encouraged to delete and repost:
I had a strange experience while reading The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, though it's not the only time this has happened. At first, the book was slow going for me. I got tired of all the descriptions, and it was pretty depressing. I regretted starting it just because it was considered a classic. I’ve started other classics and never finished them for various reasons, like the stream-of-consciousness style in some of Virginia Woolf’s or William Faulkner’s works. But this one I understood just fine. Still, I couldn’t convince myself to stop reading it either.
I stuck with it though, read a bit about Steinbeck and the historical context, and gradually something shifted.
I began to see parallels with my own situation and family struggles. I got really invested in the Joad family, I wanted them to make it. One night, I stayed up reading until 4 a.m.! Almost finishing the book.
But then I hit a mental block. I kept finding excuses not to read the last few pages. It took me a couple of weeks before I finally went back and finished it. The ending was… well, symbolic and fitting in some ways, but also dissatisfying in some ways that was hard to understand.
I realized part of the problem was that it was the end. Like it felt like a loss, a kind of separation. I had been traveling with this family I’d grown so fond of, as we searched for work, for food, for somewhere to belong. And now they were gone. I don’t know what happens to them. I can’t talk to them anymore. It felt so abrupt and final.
“Damn the author,” I thought. Why couldn’t there be sequels? I want more, like let’s get to know their past, let’s follow them into the future, let’s stay connected dammit!
I mentioned this to a friend who laughed and told me I was weird, though he admitted he’d had a similar experience. He couldn’t recall the title, but it was a book he read in another language as a kid (he was not born in US), a long story of revenge. He remembered identifying with it deeply, imagining getting back at all the people who had wronged him, and said he never wanted to reach the end either.
Has anyone else felt this way?
What book was it, and can you reflect on why you didn’t want to finish it? How long did you set it aside? Was the ending what you wanted or expected, and did it feel satisfactory?
by beastinsideabeast