Question

In the Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck, why does He write these three sentences as three separate sentences rather than combining them?

"For a moment he stopped, his head held high. He blinked and looked up and down. At last he started to climb the embankment."

Answer 1

If he wrote all of these things in a one sentence it would imply a single event. Written the way it is, we can tell these things didn't happen all at once. He is stopping to think about the climb before actually starting to do it.