"The Moon is Down" Question 7

John Steinbeck is a clever little man.  I actually don't know how little or big he is, I'm just saying that for effect.  Steinbeck is a very descriptive writer.  As my brother Adam put it, "All John Steinbeck's book are just a junk load of adjective with a few nouns and verbs to make it into a book."  I think this is true.  I may not have worded that quite the same but the idea is similar never the less.  John Steinbeck uses heavily descriptive writing to suck the reader into whatever it is he is writing about and get them stuck like a mouse on a sticky pad.  Ok maybe not that inhumane but you get the picture. He turns a somewhat drab and gray story into a colorful interesting work of art, if you will.  I don't know about anyone else whose ever read it but that was what mainly kept me interested through out "The Moon is Down".  Another technique that John Steinbeck uses in writing "The Moon is Down" is mystery.  Ok.  I bet you're thinking, "Mystery? Say whaaaat?"  Think about it though.  In the beginning, Colonel Lanser asks Mayor Orden to asks his people to give their full cooperation and the entire process will be much easier.  Mayor Orden refuses to do such a thing.  He says his people will not cooperate if their very freedom is being taken away.  Right there!  That's were the mystery begins!  Weren't you wondering, "Oooooooh!  What will the people do?  Will they fight for their freedom?  Will they just go along with it and do nothing?  Will they plan a huge uprising like in the "Hunger Games?"  I wanna knowwww!"  That's what went through my head.  I was kind of disappointed when there wasn't some huge uprising but they did at least get the dynamite.  The dynamite came when two boys fled the country for England and Mayor Orden asked them to beg whoever in command to send them something, anything, to use against the soldiers.  So back to the point.  Not knowing what the people were going to do kept me very interested and kept me reading the book. 






Simon, Marion, and C. Bosker. John Steinbeck: The Moon Is down. Paterswolde: Dalcomtext, 1997. Print.