Through Chapter4

I am through with reading the first four chapters of Grapes of Wrath. So far I do not know why two of the chapters were included. The first unnecessary chapter, which was Chapter One, talked about nothing but how dusty the Corn Belt was during the Dust Bowl in the Depression. I mean of course it is going to be dusty, it is THE DUST BOWL. I struggled to make it through this chapter without falling asleep. I think if it was longer than a handful of pages I might have.

The other unnecessary chapter was Chapter Three. All this chapter did was talk about some turtle walking around, going up a hill and onto the road. This leads me to wonder whether or not the turtle will eventually symbolize something. But as for now, this turtle has no significance to me at all and did not need to be included in the book.

I think it has been kind of hard to read the dialogs between Joad and the old priest/pastor. It is similar to reading the words of Nigger Jim from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Most of the time I have to read through the phrase more than once to understand what they are saying. It really makes things difficult, and makes the book read a little slow.

One thing that confuses me so far about Joad is why he seems like a poor man. I can not figure out if he actually is poor or just wants to live that kind of life. I mean he has to hitchhike to get back to his road so that leads me to believe he may actually be poor. Then a contradiction to that would be Joad is dressed in completely new attire. I want to know why these two things are happening.

Another thing that is bugging me is the old priest. I want to know how a priest becomes a person that does "as many bad thing" as this old priest has done. He never tells us what he did that made him such a bad person so this makes me question him and what he has actually done.

I am sure these questions will all be answered as I continue reading.