Difficulty

While reading In Dubious Battle I came across much difficulty. The time that this novel took place was the main reason for my frustrations.  Steinbeck uses so much dialogue throughout the book that I found it hard at times to know what character was actually speaking. Some parts of the book I had to re-read a few times to truly understand what was going on. I tried to picture a movie scene in my head to understand how these conversations were actually taking place.

            In Dubious Battle also had a lot of words that I had no idea what the meanings were. For example, ‘handbills’, I had no idea what that meant. So I would look up words online whenever I found it important in the text. I found that it meant a text or notice of something.

            Since this book was based on something that happened so long ago, I found it hard to want to read it. There are book that you cannot put down, and there are book that you want to put down. This was definitely a book I wanted to down!  I tried to read 20 pages a night, but found myself putting the book down just after 5 or 6 pages. Finally I forced myself to read 200 pages in one day just to get it over with! I tried to get my mindset into liking this book, but it just did not happen. I couldn’t relate to any character in this book at all. I wish that I could’ve enjoyed it more…but I didn’t.

            One of the most difficult things about this book is how it ends. After forcing myself to read it, the ending was horrible!  Steinbeck must have been a depressed man to end this book like that.