{"href":"http://player.captivate.fm/services/oembed?url=http%3A%2F%2Fplayer.captivate.fm%2Fepisode%2F0d0c158a-cd2e-49b4-9b27-b940fbd74a8c","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Captivate.FM","provider_url":"https://www.captivate.fm","width":600,"height":200,"type":"rich","html":"","title":"Episode 266 \u2013 Book Club with Peter","description":"
\nPeter and Trevor discuss a range of fiction and non-fiction books that\u00a0 IFVG listeners might want to read.
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\n* Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953)
\n* The Canon of Scripture by FF Bruce (1988)
\n* Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (160-180 CE)
\n* Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig (1974)
\n* Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (1847)
\n* Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy (1874)
\n* A Bright Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan (1989)
\n* The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939)
\n* 1984 or Animal Farm by George Orwell (1945 & 1949)
\n* Death Sentence by Don Watson (2003)DEAD AUTHORS SOCIETY (or LITERATURE FOR BUSY PEOPLE)
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\nElif Shafak: \u2018We need to tell different stories, to humanise the other\u2019
\nFrom The Guardian
\nHistory has shown that it doesn\u2019t start with concentration camps or mass murder, or civil war or genocide. It always starts with words: stereotypes, cliches, tropes. The fight against dehumanisation, therefore, also needs to start with words. Stories. It is easier to make sweeping generalisations about others if we know close to nothing about them; if they remain an abstraction. To move forward, we need to reverse the process: start by rehumanising those who have been dehumanised. And for that we need the art of storytelling.
\nData and factual information are crucial, but not enough to bring down the walls of numbness and indifference, to help us empathise with people outside our tribes. We need emotional connections. But more than that, just as we need sisterhood against patriarchy, we need storyhood against bigotry. East or west, when we relate to others we do so through stories. Literature can be incredibly powerful, universally relevant and, most importantly, a healing force.
\nThe Grapes of Wrath
\nFrom Study.com
\nThe Grapes of Wrath
\nJohn Steinbeck published this famous novel in 1939, and it’s still widely read for pleasure and in high school English classrooms across the country. The novel is about a family that moves from Oklahoma, which was ”The Dustbowl” area of the United States that was suffering from drought and the Great Depression, to California in search of work. Steinbeck had a harder time choosing a title for the book than he did writing it; his wife helped him think of the phrase ”the grapes of wrath,” which comes from a couple different sources.
\nOrigins of the Title
\nThe phrase ”grapes of wrath” is a biblical\u00a0allusion, or reference, to the Book of Revelation, passage 14:19-20, which reads, ”So the angel swung his sickle to the earth and gathered the clusters from the vine of the earth, and threw them into the great wine press of the wrath of God.”
\nIn this passage, the wrath of God is his anger and punishment over the evil that is in the world; this line is a\u00a0metaphor, or comparison, using grapes and the wine press where the angel is helping God transform the grapes (evil on Earth) into God’s wrath, punishment, and justice (wine). Here, wine symbolizes the blood that will come from his wrath. Essentially, the quote is about God bestowing vengeance and justice upon the people who are evil on Earth and deserve punishment.
\nThere is a second source that the title is a reference to, and this one is the famous song ”The Battle Hymn of the Republic”. Because the song was written in the context of American history and politics, it connects to\u00a0The Grapes of Wrath\u00a0more clearly because it’s also a text that is grounded in a specific time and place in American history. Julia Howe wrote\u00a0”The Battle Hymn of the Republic”\u00a0in 1861. The opening stanza references the biblical passage,","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300,"thumbnail_url":"https://artwork.captivate.fm/085762e2-797c-4ef4-9b10-434ecde61c07/logo2018v2.jpg"}