The
Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck
Plot
Overview
Released
from an Oklahoma state prison after serving four years for a manslaughter
conviction, Tom Joad makes his way back to his family’s farm in Oklahoma. He
meets Jim Casy, a former preacher who has given up his calling out of a belief
that all life is holy—even the parts that are typically thought to be
sinful—and that sacredness consists simply in endeavoring to be an equal among
the people. Jim accompanies Tom to his home, only to find it—and all the
surrounding farms—deserted. Muley Graves, an old neighbor, wanders by and tells
the men that everyone has been “tractored” off the land. Most families, he
says, including his own, have headed to California to look for work. The next
morning, Tom and Jim set out for Tom’s Uncle John’s, where Muley assures them
they will find the Joad clan. Upon arrival, Tom finds Ma and Pa Joad packing up
the family’s few possessions. Having seen handbills advertising fruit-picking
jobs in California, they envision the trip to California as their only hope of
getting their lives back on track.
The
journey to California in a rickety used truck is long and arduous. Grampa Joad,
a feisty old man who complains bitterly that he does not want to leave his
land, dies on the road shortly after the family’s departure. Dilapidated cars
and trucks, loaded down with scrappy possessions, clog Highway 66: it seems the
entire country is in flight to the Promised Land of California. The Joads meet
Ivy and Sairy Wilson, a couple plagued with car trouble, and invite them to
travel with the family. Sairy Wilson is sick and, near the California border,
becomes unable to continue the journey.
As the
Joads near California, they hear ominous rumors of a depleted job market. One
migrant tells Pa that 20,000 people show up for every 800 jobs and that his own
children have starved to death. Although the Joads press on, their first days
in California prove tragic, as Granma Joad dies. The remaining family members
move from one squalid camp to the next, looking in vain for work, struggling to
find food, and trying desperately to hold their family together. Noah, the
oldest of the Joad children, soon abandons the family, as does Connie, a young
dreamer who is married to Tom’s pregnant sister, Rose of Sharon.
The Joads
meet with much hostility in California. The camps are overcrowded and full of
starving migrants, who are often nasty to each other. The locals are fearful
and angry at the flood of newcomers, whom they derisively label “Okies.” Work
is almost impossible to find or pays such a meager wage that a family’s full
day’s work cannot buy a decent meal. Fearing an uprising, the large landowners
do everything in their power to keep the migrants poor and dependent. While staying
in a ramshackle camp known as a “Hooverville,” Tom and several men get into a
heated argument with a deputy sheriff over whether workers should organize into
a union. When the argument turns violent, Jim Casy knocks the sheriff
unconscious and is arrested. Police officers arrive and announce their
intention to burn the Hooverville to the ground.
A
government-run camp proves much more hospitable to the Joads, and the family
soon finds many friends and a bit of work. However, one day, while working at a
pipe-laying job, Tom learns that the police are planning to stage a riot in the
camp, which will allow them to shut down the facilities. By alerting and
organizing the men in the camp, Tom helps to defuse the danger. Still, as
pleasant as life in the government camp is, the Joads cannot survive without
steady work, and they have to move on. They find employment picking fruit, but
soon learn that they are earning a decent wage only because they have been
hired to break a workers’ strike. Tom runs into Jim Casy who, after being
released from jail, has begun organizing workers; in the process, Casy has made
many enemies among the landowners. When the police hunt him down and kill him
in Tom’s presence, Tom retaliates and kills a police officer.
Tom goes
into hiding, while the family moves into a boxcar on a cotton farm. One day,
Ruthie, the youngest Joad daughter, reveals to a girl in the camp that her
brother has killed two men and is hiding nearby. Fearing for his safety, Ma
Joad finds Tom and sends him away. Tom heads off to fulfill Jim’s task of
organizing the migrant workers. The end of the cotton season means the end of
work, and word sweeps across the land that there are no jobs to be had for
three months. Rains set in and flood the land. Rose of Sharon gives birth to a
stillborn child, and Ma, desperate to get her family to safety from the floods,
leads them to a dry barn not far away. Here, they find a young boy kneeling
over his father, who is slowly starving to death. He has not eaten for days,
giving whatever food he had to his son. Realizing that Rose of Sharon is now
producing milk, Ma sends the others outside, so that her daughter can nurse the
dying man.
Character
List
Tom Joad - The novel’s
protagonist, and Ma and Pa Joad’s favorite son. Tom is good-natured and
thoughtful and makes do with what life hands him. Even though he killed a man
and has been separated from his family for four years, he does not waste his
time with regrets. He lives fully for the present moment, which enables him to
be a great source of vitality for the Joad family. A wise guide and fierce
protector, Tom exhibits a moral certainty throughout the novel that imbues him
with strength and resolve: he earns the awed respect of his family members as
well as the workers he later organizes into unions.
Ma Joad - The mother of the
Joad family. Ma is introduced as a woman who knowingly and gladly fulfills her
role as “the citadel of the family.” She is the healer of the family’s ills and
the arbiter of its arguments, and her ability to perform these tasks grows as
the novel progresses.
Pa Joad - Ma Joad’s husband
and Tom’s father. Pa Joad is an Oklahoma tenant farmer who has been evicted
from his farm. A plainspoken, good-hearted man, Pa directs the effort to take
the family to California. Once there, unable to find work and increasingly
desperate, Pa finds himself looking to Ma Joad for strength and leadership,
though he sometimes feels ashamed of his weaker position.
Jim Casy - A former
preacher who gave up his ministry out of a belief that all human experience is
holy. Often the moral voice of the novel, Casy articulates many of its most
important themes, among them the sanctity of the people and the essential unity
of all mankind. A staunch friend of Tom Joad, Casy goes to prison in Tom’s
stead for a fight that erupts between laborers and the California police. He
emerges a determined organizer of the migrant workers.
Rose of Sharon -
The oldest of Ma and Pa Joad’s daughters, and Connie’s wife. An impractical,
petulant, and romantic young woman, Rose of Sharon begins the journey to
California pregnant with her first child. She and Connie have grand notions of
making a life for themselves in a city. The harsh realities of migrant life
soon disabuse Rose of Sharon of these ideas, however. Her husband abandons her,
and her child is born dead. By the end of the novel, she matures considerably,
and possesses, the reader learns with surprise, something of her mother’s
indomitable spirit and grace.
Grampa Joad - Tom Joad’s
grandfather. The founder of the Joad farm, Grampa is now old and infirm. Once
possessed of a cruel and violent temper, Grampa’s wickedness is now limited
almost exclusively to his tongue. He delights in tormenting his wife and
shocking others with sinful talk. Although his character serves largely to
produce comical effect, he exhibits a very real and poignant connection to the
land. The family is forced to drug him in order to get him to leave the
homestead; removed from his natural element, however, Grampa soon dies.
Granma Joad - Granma is a
pious Christian, who loves casting hellfire and damnation in her husband’s
direction. Her health deteriorates quickly after Grandpa’s death; she dies just
after the family reaches California.
Al Joad - om’s younger
brother, a sixteen-year-old boy obsessed with cars and girls. Al is vain and
cocky but an extremely competent mechanic, and his expertise proves vital in
bringing the Joads, as well as the Wilsons, to California. He idolizes Tom, but
by the end of the novel he has become his own man. When he falls in love with a
girl named Agnes Wainwright at a cotton plantation where they are working, he
decides to stay with her rather than leaving with his family.
Ivy and Sairy Wilson -
A couple traveling to California whom the Joads meet on Highway 66, just before
Grampa’s death. The Wilsons lend the Joads their tent so that Grampa can have a
comfortable place to die. The Joads return the couple’s kindness by fixing
their broken-down car. Hoping to make the trip easier, the two families combine
forces, traveling together until Sairy Wilson’s health forces her and Ivy to
stop.
Connie - Rose of Sharon’s
husband, Connie is an unrealistic dreamer who abandons the Joads after they
reach California. This act of selfishness and immaturity surprises no one but
his naïve wife.
Noah Joad - Tom’s older
brother. Noah has been slightly deformed since his birth: Pa Joad had to
perform the delivery and, panicking, tried to pull him out forcibly. Slow and
quiet, Noah leaves his family behind at a stream near the California border,
telling Tom that he feels his parents do not love him as much as they love the
other children.
Uncle John - Tom’s uncle,
who, years ago, refused to fetch a doctor for his pregnant wife when she
complained of stomach pains. He has never forgiven himself for her death, and
he often dwells heavily on the negligence he considers a sin.
Ruthie Joad - The second
and younger Joad daughter. Ruthie has a fiery relationship to her brother
Winfield: the two are intensely dependent upon one another and fiercely
competitive. When she brags to another child that her brother has killed two
men, she inadvertently puts Tom’s life in danger, forcing him to flee.
Winfield Joad -
At the age of ten, Winfield is the youngest of the Joad children. Ma worries
for his well-being, fearing that without a proper home he will grow up to be
wild and rootless.
Floyd Knowles -
The migrant worker who first inspires Tom and Casy to work for labor
organization. Floyd’s outspokenness sparks a scuffle with the police in which
Casy is arrested.
Muley Graves - One of the
Joads’ Oklahoma neighbors. When the bank evicts his family, Muley refuses to
leave his land. Instead, he lets his wife and children move to California
without him and stays behind to live outdoors. When he comes upon Tom at the
abandoned Joad farm, he directs the young man to his Uncle John’s.
Agnes Wainwright -
The daughter of the couple who shares the Joads’ boxcar toward the end of the
novel. Agnes becomes engaged to Al, who leaves his family in order to stay with
her.
Character
List
Tom Joad - The novel’s
protagonist, and Ma and Pa Joad’s favorite son. Tom is good-natured and thoughtful
and makes do with what life hands him. Even though he killed a man and has been
separated from his family for four years, he does not waste his time with
regrets. He lives fully for the present moment, which enables him to be a great
source of vitality for the Joad family. A wise guide and fierce protector, Tom
exhibits a moral certainty throughout the novel that imbues him with strength
and resolve: he earns the awed respect of his family members as well as the
workers he later organizes into unions.
Ma Joad - The mother of the
Joad family. Ma is introduced as a woman who knowingly and gladly fulfills her
role as “the citadel of the family.” She is the healer of the family’s ills and
the arbiter of its arguments, and her ability to perform these tasks grows as
the novel progresses.
Pa Joad - Ma Joad’s husband
and Tom’s father. Pa Joad is an Oklahoma tenant farmer who has been evicted
from his farm. A plainspoken, good-hearted man, Pa directs the effort to take
the family to California. Once there, unable to find work and increasingly
desperate, Pa finds himself looking to Ma Joad for strength and leadership,
though he sometimes feels ashamed of his weaker position.
Jim Casy - A former
preacher who gave up his ministry out of a belief that all human experience is
holy. Often the moral voice of the novel, Casy articulates many of its most
important themes, among them the sanctity of the people and the essential unity
of all mankind. A staunch friend of Tom Joad, Casy goes to prison in Tom’s
stead for a fight that erupts between laborers and the California police. He
emerges a determined organizer of the migrant workers.
Rose of Sharon -
The oldest of Ma and Pa Joad’s daughters, and Connie’s wife. An impractical,
petulant, and romantic young woman, Rose of Sharon begins the journey to
California pregnant with her first child. She and Connie have grand notions of
making a life for themselves in a city. The harsh realities of migrant life
soon disabuse Rose of Sharon of these ideas, however. Her husband abandons her,
and her child is born dead. By the end of the novel, she matures considerably,
and possesses, the reader learns with surprise, something of her mother’s indomitable
spirit and grace.
Grampa Joad - Tom Joad’s
grandfather. The founder of the Joad farm, Grampa is now old and infirm. Once
possessed of a cruel and violent temper, Grampa’s wickedness is now limited
almost exclusively to his tongue. He delights in tormenting his wife and
shocking others with sinful talk. Although his character serves largely to produce
comical effect, he exhibits a very real and poignant connection to the land.
The family is forced to drug him in order to get him to leave the homestead;
removed from his natural element, however, Grampa soon dies.
Granma Joad - Granma is a
pious Christian, who loves casting hellfire and damnation in her husband’s
direction. Her health deteriorates quickly after Grandpa’s death; she dies just
after the family reaches California.
Al Joad - om’s younger
brother, a sixteen-year-old boy obsessed with cars and girls. Al is vain and
cocky but an extremely competent mechanic, and his expertise proves vital in
bringing the Joads, as well as the Wilsons, to California. He idolizes Tom, but
by the end of the novel he has become his own man. When he falls in love with a
girl named Agnes Wainwright at a cotton plantation where they are working, he
decides to stay with her rather than leaving with his family.
Ivy and Sairy Wilson -
A couple traveling to California whom the Joads meet on Highway 66, just before
Grampa’s death. The Wilsons lend the Joads their tent so that Grampa can have a
comfortable place to die. The Joads return the couple’s kindness by fixing
their broken-down car. Hoping to make the trip easier, the two families combine
forces, traveling together until Sairy Wilson’s health forces her and Ivy to
stop.
Connie - Rose of Sharon’s
husband, Connie is an unrealistic dreamer who abandons the Joads after they
reach California. This act of selfishness and immaturity surprises no one but
his naïve wife.
Noah Joad - Tom’s older
brother. Noah has been slightly deformed since his birth: Pa Joad had to
perform the delivery and, panicking, tried to pull him out forcibly. Slow and
quiet, Noah leaves his family behind at a stream near the California border, telling
Tom that he feels his parents do not love him as much as they love the other
children.
Uncle John - Tom’s uncle,
who, years ago, refused to fetch a doctor for his pregnant wife when she
complained of stomach pains. He has never forgiven himself for her death, and
he often dwells heavily on the negligence he considers a sin.
Ruthie Joad - The second
and younger Joad daughter. Ruthie has a fiery relationship to her brother
Winfield: the two are intensely dependent upon one another and fiercely competitive.
When she brags to another child that her brother has killed two men, she
inadvertently puts Tom’s life in danger, forcing him to flee.
Winfield Joad -
At the age of ten, Winfield is the youngest of the Joad children. Ma worries
for his well-being, fearing that without a proper home he will grow up to be
wild and rootless.
Floyd Knowles -
The migrant worker who first inspires Tom and Casy to work for labor
organization. Floyd’s outspokenness sparks a scuffle with the police in which
Casy is arrested.
Muley Graves - One of the
Joads’ Oklahoma neighbors. When the bank evicts his family, Muley refuses to
leave his land. Instead, he lets his wife and children move to California
without him and stays behind to live outdoors. When he comes upon Tom at the
abandoned Joad farm, he directs the young man to his Uncle John’s.
Agnes Wainwright -
The daughter of the couple who shares the Joads’ boxcar toward the end of the
novel. Agnes becomes engaged to Al, who leaves his family in order to stay with
her.
Analysis
of Major Characters
Tom Joad
Tom begins the novel in possession of a practical sort of
self-interest. Four years in prison, he claims, have molded him into someone
who devotes his time and energies to the present moment. The future, which
seems illusory and out of reach, does not concern him. He adopts this
philosophy toward living not because he is selfish but as a means of coping: he
fears that by putting his life in a context larger than the present day, he
will drive himself mad with anger and helplessness. Of course, Tom, who
exhibits a rare strength, thoughtfulness, and moral certainty, is destined for
more than mere day-to-day survival. Tom undergoes the most significant
transformation in the novel as he sheds this carpe diem (seize the day)
philosophy for a commitment to bettering the future.
During their journey west, Tom assumes the role of Jim Casy’s
reluctant disciple. The former preacher emphasizes that a human being, when
acting alone, can have little effect on the world, and that one can achieve
wholeness only by devoting oneself to one’s fellow human beings. The hardship
and hostility faced by the Joad family on their journey west serve to convert
Tom to Casy’s teachings. By the time Tom and Casy reunite at the cotton
plantation, Tom realizes that he cannot stand by as a silent witness to the
world’s injustices; he cannot work for his own family’s well-being if it means
taking bread from another family. At the plantation, Tom abandons the life of
private thought that structures the lives of most of the novel’s male
characters—including Pa Joad and Uncle John—and sets out on a course of public
action.
Ma Joad
A determined and loving woman, Ma Joad emerges as the family’s
center of strength over the course of the novel as Pa Joad gradually becomes
less effective as a leader and provider. Regardless of how bleak circumstances
become, Ma Joad meets every obstacle unflinchingly. Time and again, Ma displays
a startling capacity to keep herself together—and to keep the family
together—in the face of great turmoil. She may demonstrate this faculty best
during the family’s crossing of the California desert. Here, Ma suffers
privately with the knowledge that Granma is dead, riding silently alongside her
corpse so that the family can complete its treacherous journey. At the end of
the episode, Ma’s calm exterior cracks just slightly: she warns Tom not to
touch her, saying that she can retain her calm only as long as he doesn’t reach
out to her. This ability to act decisively, and to act for the family’s good,
enables Ma to lead the Joads when Pa begins to falter and hesitate. Although
she keeps her sorrows to herself, she is not an advocate of solitude. She
consistently proves to be the novel’s strongest supporter of family and
togetherness. Indeed, the two tendencies are not in conflict but convene in a
philosophy of selfless sacrifice. Ma articulates this best, perhaps, when she
wordlessly directs her daughter to breast-feed the starving man in Chapter 30.
With her indomitable nature, Ma Joad suggests that even the most horrible
circumstances can be weathered with grace and dignity.
Pa Joad
Pa Joad is a good, thoughtful man, and he plans the family’s trip
to California with great care and consideration. The hardships faced by the
Joads prove too great for him, however, and although he works hard to maintain
his role as head of the family, he complains of muddled thoughts and finds
himself in frequent quandaries. Until the very end, Pa exhibits a commitment to
protecting his family. His determination to erect a dam is a moving testament
to his love and singleness of purpose. When his efforts begin to fall short,
however, Pa despairs. In California, his inability to find work forces him to
retreat helplessly into his own thoughts. As a result, he becomes less and less
effective in his role as family leader, and Ma points this out directly. Upon
leaving the Weedpatch camp, she boldly criticizes him for losing sight of his
responsibility to support the family. By the end of the novel, further
diminished by the failed attempt to prevent the family’s shelter from flooding,
he follows Ma as blindly and helplessly as a child. Pa’s gradual breakdown
serves as a sharp reminder that hardship does not always “build character.”
Though the challenges of the Joads’ journey serve to strengthen Ma, Tom, and
even Rose of Sharon, they weaken and eventually paralyze Pa.
Jim Casy
Steinbeck employs Jim Casy to articulate some of the novel’s major
themes. Most notably, the ex-preacher redefines the concept of holiness,
suggesting that the most divine aspect of human experience is to be found on
earth, among one’s fellow humans, rather than amid the clouds. As a radical
philosopher, a motivator and unifier of men, and a martyr, Casy assumes a role
akin to that of Jesus Christ—with whom he also shares his initials. Casy begins
the novel uncertain of how to use his talents as a speaker and spiritual healer
if not as the leader of a religious congregation. By the end of the novel, he
has learned to apply them to his task of organizing the migrant workers.
Indeed, Casy comes to believe so strongly in his mission to save the suffering
laborers that he willingly gives his life for it. Casy’s teachings prompt the
novel’s most dramatic character development, by catalyzing Tom Joad’s transformation
into a social activist and man of the people.
Rose of Sharon
In creating the character of Rose of Sharon, Steinbeck relies
heavily on stereotypes. We read that pregnancy has transformed the girl from a
“hoyden”—a high-spirited and saucy girl—into a secretive and mysterious woman.
Time and again, Steinbeck alludes to the girl’s silent self-containment and her
impenetrable smile. This portrayal of pregnancy may initially seem to bespeak a
romanticism out of keeping with Steinbeck’s characteristic realism. However,
Steinbeck uses such seemingly trite details to prepare Rose of Sharon for the
dramatic role she plays at the end of the novel. When she meets the starving
man in the barn, she becomes saintly, otherworldly. Her capacity to sustain
life, paired with her suffering and grief for her dead child, liken her to the
Virgin Mother and suggest that there is hope to be found even in the bleakest
of circumstances.
Themes,
Motifs & Symbols
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a
literary work.
Man’s
Inhumanity to Man
Steinbeck
consistently and woefully points to the fact that the migrants’ great suffering
is caused not by bad weather or mere misfortune but by their fellow human
beings. Historical, social, and economic circumstances separate people into
rich and poor, landowner and tenant, and the people in the dominant roles
struggle viciously to preserve their positions. In his brief history of
California in Chapter 19, Steinbeck portrays the state as the product of
land-hungry squatters who took the land from Mexicans and, by working it and
making it produce, rendered it their own. Now, generations later, the
California landowners see this historical example as a threat, since they
believe that the influx of migrant farmers might cause history to repeat
itself. In order to protect themselves from such danger, the landowners create
a system in which the migrants are treated like animals, shuffled from one
filthy roadside camp to the next, denied livable wages, and forced to turn
against their brethren simply to survive. The novel draws a simple line through
the population—one that divides the privileged from the poor—and identifies
that division as the primary source of evil and suffering in the world.
The Saving
Power of Family and Fellowship
The Grapes of Wrath chronicles the story of two “families”: the Joads and the
collective body of migrant workers. Although the Joads are joined by blood, the
text argues that it is not their genetics but their loyalty and commitment to
one another that establishes their true kinship. In the migrant lifestyle
portrayed in the book, the biological family unit, lacking a home to define its
boundaries, quickly becomes a thing of the past, as life on the road demands
that new connections and new kinships be formed. The reader witnesses this
phenomenon at work when the Joads meet the Wilsons. In a remarkably short time,
the two groups merge into one, sharing one another’s hardships and committing
to one another’s survival. This merging takes place among the migrant community
in general as well: “twenty families became one family, the children were the
children of all. The loss of home became one loss, and the golden time in the
West was one dream.” In the face of adversity, the livelihood of the migrants
depends upon their union. As Tom eventually realizes, “his” people are all people.
The
Dignity of Wrath
The Joads
stand as exemplary figures in their refusal to be broken by the circumstances
that conspire against them. At every turn, Steinbeck seems intent on showing
their dignity and honor; he emphasizes the importance of maintaining
self-respect in order to survive spiritually. Nowhere is this more evident than
at the end of the novel. The Joads have suffered incomparable losses: Noah,
Connie, and Tom have left the family; Rose of Sharon gives birth to a stillborn
baby; the family possesses neither food nor promise of work. Yet it is at this
moment (Chapter 30) that the family manages to rise above hardship to perform
an act of unsurpassed kindness and generosity for the starving man, showing
that the Joads have not lost their sense of the value of human life.
Steinbeck
makes a clear connection in his novel between dignity and rage. As long as
people maintain a sense of injustice—a sense of anger against those who seek to
undercut their pride in themselves—they will never lose their dignity. This
notion receives particular reinforcement in Steinbeck’s images of the festering
grapes of wrath (Chapter 25), and in the last of the short, expository chapters
(Chapter 29), in which the worker women, watching their husbands and brothers
and sons, know that these men will remain strong “as long as fear [can] turn to
wrath.” The women’s certainty is based on their understanding that the men’s wrath
bespeaks their healthy sense of self-respect.
The
Multiplying Effects of Selfishness and Altruism
According
to Steinbeck, many of the evils that plague the Joad family and the migrants
stem from selfishness. Simple self-interest motivates the landowners and
businessmen to sustain a system that sinks thousands of families into poverty.
In contrast to and in conflict with this policy of selfishness stands the
migrants’ behavior toward one another. Aware that their livelihood and survival
depend upon their devotion to the collective good, the migrants unite—sharing
their dreams as well as their burdens—in order to survive. Throughout the
novel, Steinbeck constantly emphasizes self-interest and altruism as equal and
opposite powers, evenly matched in their conflict with each other. In Chapters
13 and 15, for example, Steinbeck presents both greed and generosity as
self-perpetuating, following cyclical dynamics. In Chapter 13, we learn that
corporate gas companies have preyed upon the gas station attendant that the
Joads meet. The attendant, in turn, insults the Joads and hesitates to help
them. Then, after a brief expository chapter, the Joads immediately happen upon
an instance of kindness as similarly self-propagating: Mae, a waitress, sells
bread and sweets to a man and his sons for drastically reduced prices. Some
truckers at the coffee shop see this interchange and leave Mae an extra-large
tip.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices
that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Improvised
Leadership Structures
When the
novel begins, the Joad family relies on a traditional family structure in which
the men make the decisions and the women obediently do as they are told. So
invested are they in these roles that they continue to honor Grampa as the head
of the family, even though he has outlived his ability to act as a sound
leader. As the Joads journey west and try to make a living in California,
however, the family dynamic changes drastically. Discouraged and defeated by
his mounting failures, Pa withdraws from his role as leader and spends his days
tangled in thought. In his stead, Ma assumes the responsibility of making
decisions for the family. At first, this shocks Pa, who, at one point, lamely
threatens to beat her into her so-called proper place. The threat is empty,
however, and the entire family knows it. By the end of the novel, the family
structure has undergone a revolution, in which the woman figure, traditionally
powerless, has taken control, while the male figure, traditionally in the
leadership role, has retreated. This revolution parallels a similar upheaval in
the larger economic hierarchies in the outside world. Thus, the workers at the
Weedpatch camp govern themselves according to their own rules and share tasks
in accordance with notions of fairness and equality rather than power-hungry
ambition or love of authority.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to
represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Rose of
Sharon’s Pregnancy
Rose of
Sharon’s pregnancy holds the promise of a new beginning. When she delivers a
stillborn baby, that promise seems broken. But rather than slipping into
despair, the family moves boldly and gracefully forward, and the novel ends on
a surprising (albeit unsettling) note of hope. In the last few pages of his
book, Steinbeck employs many symbols, a number of which refer directly to
episodes in the Bible. The way in which Uncle John disposes of the child’s
corpse recalls Moses being sent down the Nile. The image suggests that the
family, like the Hebrews in Egypt, will be delivered from the slavery of its
present circumstances.
The Death
of the Joads’ Dog
When the
Joads stop for gas not long after they begin their trip west, they are met by a
hostile station attendant, who accuses them of being beggars and vagrants.
While there, a fancy roadster runs down their dog and leaves it for dead in the
middle of the road. The gruesome death constitutes the first of many symbols
foreshadowing the tragedies that await the family.
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