The Grapes of Wrath

by John Steinbeck

Plot Synopsis with its Analysis

Tom Joad is hitchhiking home after being released from the state prison on parole. He has served four years of a seven year sentence. He catches a ride with a truck driver who takes him to the road which leads to his family's farm. As he is walking the rest of the way, he meets Jim Casy, an itinerant preacher. He isn't a preacher anymore, because he used to meet some girl out on the grass to sleep with her. Casy explains that he has been away for some time trying to figure out some things, and has decided that since all things are holy, he need not be preacher any more but just live with the people because the people are holy. They decide to go together to Tom's place. When they arrive, they find that there's something wrong and that the place is deserted. They can't understand it. It looks as though all the neighboring farms are deserted. Soon they see someone coming. It is Muley Graves who tells them that Tom's folks are at his Uncle John's. Muley explains that he has already been pushed off his place, and his family has gone to California, but he couldn't leave the land that his Pa settled. Jim and Tom decide to sleep in the fields that night, although Muley leads them to a little cave. They walk on to Uncle John's the next day.

It is both ironic and a bit of foreshadowing that Tom refuses to sleep in the cave that Muley shows to them. In the last chapters of the novel, Tom is forced to hide in a cave where he lives for several days, and is only too glad to find his refuge.

When they arrive, they find the Joads making preparations for a trip. All of the family members are happy that Tom is here. They were afraid that they would never see him again. It is explained to Tom that the banks and large companies closed out all the small farmers, and now most of them are heading to California where there is supposed to be work.

This part presents the first hints of the "grapes" which stand symbolically for a new and better way of living. No one knows that the grapes of hope will become the grapes of wrath.

They sell all of their belongings, but get only 18 dollars for them. Therefore, the family is disappointed, tired and sad. After having a family conference, in which they decide that they don't want to leave Casy,, he joins them, because he has to be where people are. When they are about ready to leave, Grampa Joad doesn't want to leave. He "will stay right where he belongs". They have to give him a kind of sleeping medicine in order to get him away.

The first note of doubt appears in these chapters as Ma Joad questions her faith in things being so good out in California. Throughout the rest of the novel, about all they can do is to live from day to day.

When they stop on the first night of the journey west, Grampa begins to whimper and cry. Casy begins to recite the Lord's prayer, but Grampa has a stroke and dies immediately. The Joads, who have stopped next to some more migrants, the Wilsons, borrow a quilt from the Wilsons and bury Grampa with a bottle explaining who he is in case anyone ever dug him up. They then fix the Wilson's broken-down car, and the two families begin the trip together.

It is important to see the idea of family as a unit. The death of Grampa represents the breaking up of the smaller family unit, but at the same time, the "adoption" of the Wilsons indicates that the individual family is being replaced by the concept of a world family. This is what Casy has been preaching and his words are obviously being put into action.

Just as they reach California, Mrs. Wilson becomes so sick that she can't go any further, and the Joads give them some money and food and leave them.

Because the car breaks down, Tom and Casy want to come to California a little bit later. But Ma rebels and threatens she won't go without them. She will not agree to breaking up the family.

She makes her first strong stand in insisting that the family stay together. "All we got is the family unbroke."

When they reach the border of California, the Joads rest up before crossing the desert. A man asks them if they have been called an "Okie" yet. He explains that an "Okie" used to mean a person from Oklahoma, but now the word has a very negative meaning. At this place, Noah decides that he is not going with the family, because he just can't leave this nice river. Besides, Connie leaves Rose of Sharon, who feels she's ill.

As they began the trip across the great desert at night, Ma Joad realizes that Granma is dying. She explains to the old woman that the family must get across the desert because they are about out of money. Granma dies early in the night. When a guard stops them, Ma Joad tells the guard that they must get to a doctor because Granma is sick. The guard looks and let them pass. Ma tells the family to drive on, and in the morning when they are safely across, she tells the family that Granma is dead. They have to leave her to be buried a pauper because they don't have enough money for a funeral.

They arrive in a place where many other migrants are camping. Even though it is dirty and disorderly, they stop. But the men are unable to find work. A contractor comes through looking for workers, and when a friend of Tom's asks what they are paying, the friend is accused of being a "red" and is arrested. A fight ensues, and the sheriff tells the people that the whole camp will be burned. Suddenly Tom trips the deputy. Then Casy stands up and kicks the deputy in the neck. The contractor flees for help. Therefore, Casy sends Tom away, reminding him that he broke parole. When more officers arrive, he takes all the blame. The deputy doesn't think that Casy is the right person, but they arrest him anyway.

In this chapter, Casy's role changes. Now he moves from thought to action. He offers himself as a sacrifice for Tom. In the meantime, the family has lost its dog, Grampa, Noah, Granma, Casy and Connie and have had to leave the Wilsons. The family is seemingly breaking up. But the people will continue, because they will help each other.

The Joads pack up and leave. They find a vacancy in a government camp which is protected from the sheriff. Here there is law and order. Despite, the Land Owners want to destroy the camp. The Joads are still unable to find work. In the evening, there's a dance, but the committee is looking that nobody starts any troubles.

There's an exact reason why the Land Owners want to destroy the camps. With a little effort, these people could organize all over California. The Owners know this and destroy the camps to prevent this organization.

Soon they are out of money and food and must move on in search of work. They hear of work in peach orchard. When they arrive, they are escorted into the camp by policemen. There are many men standing outside the camp, some yelling and waving. The Joads begin picking peaches immediately so they can have something to eat that night. Later Tom slips outside to investigate the situation involving the yelling men. He finds his friend, Jim Casy, who has been in prison, and Casy tells Tom that they are striking against the owners of the orchard who cut the wages in half. While they are talking, some men come looking for Casy who is apparently the leader of the strike. The men advance on Casy and immediately kill him. Tom becomes angry and kills one of the men. He flees and gets back to the camp, but has to hide because his nose is broken. The Joads' wages are cut in half the next day because the strike is broken. They leave and find a place where they can pick cotton and where Tom can hide in a nearby thicket.

Tom is beginning to broaden his view of life. Previously, he was concerned only for his own pleasure. Then he has devoted himself to the family's benefit. He is becoming involved in a larger humanity. Tom goes alone to investigate the strange things near the camp and his concern leads him into Jim Casy. Casy is now emerging as a Christ figure, because he has been in jail instead of figuring some things out like in earlier days. But Casy dies as did Christ, saying "You don't know what you're a-doin'."

As they are escaping from the camp, a small cave is made out of mattresses for Tom to hide in. There's a bit of irony here, since in the first chapters, Tom refused to sleep in the cave that Muley showed him.

One of the Joad children gents into a fight and threatens to call her brother Tom, bragging that he has killed a man. Ma hears about the child's threat and goes to Tom and tells him that he must leave. Tom is going to carry on with the work that Casy was doing, and he takes a little money from Ma Joad and leaves. When Tom emerges, there is the suggestion that he will become the disciple who will carry on Casy's work. Tom realizes the importance of Casy's message only after Casy died for these ideas. Ma recognizes that they should face only one day at a time. She says to Pa and Uncle John "Just live the day - We ain't gonna die out". I think she's full of hope.

As soon as the cotton picking is over, the rains set in. Just as the Joads are thinking about leaving, Rose of Sharon, who has a cold and high fever, goes into labor pains. Pa and some other men try to build an embankment to keep out the rising water. But the embankment collapses. The baby is born, but it is dead. The water continues to rise, and comes into the boxcar where they are living. Pa Joad builds a platform inside the boxcar where they stay for two more days.

As soon as the rains slacken a little, Ma Joad says that the family must find some drier place. Carrying the children on their backs, they wade through the water until they come to the highway. Down the road to find a barn with some dry hay. They also discover a man dying from starvation. The man's son tells them that his father hasn't eaten for six days. The Joads have no money and no food. Ma suggests to Rose of Sharon that she feed the dying man from her breast which Rose of Sharon gladly does.

Rose of Sharon had dreamed of having her own place when the baby was born. But the conditions under which she actually gives birth to the baby serve to destroy all of her dreams. For all of Ma's efforts to hold the family together, it continues to fall apart. Now Al is separated from the family (he decided to stay with Agnes), but at the same time, Ma now realizes that there is something greater than the family. She now comes around Casy's (and later Tom's) views. At the end of the novel, the Joads have no money, no food and they have lost their car and property. They have no place to live and no work. But in spite of these negative things, the novel ends on a positive note. Rose of Sharon is giving live to a dying stranger. There is the realization of the need of each individual to help another regardless of who he is.

Characterisation

TOM JOAD: Tom is a central character, and perhaps the one who develops most - and survives-in the novel. When Tom got out of prison, he was only interested in his own personal comforts and wants. He didn't feel guilty or ashamed of what he had done. Tom is a rather steady person who doesn't like to be pushed around. He likes his individuality and his independence. So when he see his independence or freedom endangered, he turns towards violence (e.g. the cops who pushed him around). First, he doesn't appreciate Casy's words, but after his death and after Tom has had to hide in the cave and brush, he has time to think over the things that Casy has said. Tom recognizes that man cannot live alone, that they must join together with other men because strength comes from unity. During the novel, Tom moves from a strictly independent way to a devotion to the family. He is going to carry on the work of Jim Casy. But Tom thinks Casy was perhaps too much a talker and too much an idealist. It will be left for Tom to carry out in practical ways the theoretical aspects of Casy's philosophy.

Jim Casy: Jim Casy is like a modern Christ-figure but without the Christian doctrine. The initials of his name are the same as Jesus Christ. After traveling about the country and preaching, he went into the wilderness to think things out. When he appears in the novel, he has not yet solved all of his problems. Later in the novel he is able to come to a full understanding of his views. Casy sees good in all things and good in all people. Consequently, he views all acts as good and holy because they are done by men and man himself is holy. Casy's function in the novel is to offer the social message and to react with the Joads. Without his ideas, it would be difficult for Tom to reach the point of development that he achieves. Therefore, Tom must be seen as a disciple of Casy. And Jim Casy's ideas are seen in many of Ma's actions.

Ma Joad: She is the strongest person in the family. Ma always tries to keep the family together through all their troubles. She is a strong, determined and enduring wife and mother who is the guiding or controlling member of the family. Ma Joad was always expected to be calm and allow nothing to disturb her. She was imperturbable in all things. She knew that if she ever showed fear, doubt or despair, the entire family would collapse. Therefore, she maintained a front before the family that never hesitated. She's the one who holds the family together.

Pa Joad: Tom's father. Old Tom Joad has lived all his life in Oklahoma. Now he cannot earn enough money on the farm to pay his depts to the bank. He is the titular head of the family, but he is not as characterized as Ma.

Pa is a hard-working tenant farmer who doesn't quite understand what happened. He tried to farm in the same way that his fore-fathers had farmed, and suddenly he became a migrant.

Grandpa and Grandma: The grandparents settled originally the forty acres which Pa has just lost. They never wanted to leave their home in Oklahoma.

Noah Joad: He is the oldest son who was somewhat injured at birth. Therefore, he moves rather slowly and quietly.

Rose of Sharon: In the four years of young Tom Joad's absence his sister Rosasharn grew up and married a local fellow, Connie Rivers. During the early part of the journey these two giggle and dream their way westward, as she carefully carries their unborn child. Most of Rosasharn's existence in the story is centered upon this child, who at length, because of inadequate diet, unsanitary and harrassing living conditions, and perhaps because of Connie's eventual desertion, is born dead in the last pages of the novel.

Al Joad: He is Tom's 16-year old brother, who is only interested in cars and girls.

Ruthie: She is 12, and seen in the novel at that point of suspension between girlhood and womanhood, ranging from ladylike composure which excludes her young brother Winfield to giggling, frantic games and exploits with him.

Winfield: He is 10, and realistically depicted in the gaucheries, the awkwardness, the mischievousness of a 10 year old.

The Wainwrights: In that last of the Hooverville the Wainwright family shares a long boxcar with the Joads, while they all pick cotton. Al Joad begins to court their daughter Aggie and the two become engaged. Mrs. Wainwright assists in the birth of Rosasharn's stillborn child, and when the Joads leave to take Rosasharn and the children, Ruthie and Winfield, to higher ground, Al remains behind in the water-logged boxcar with the Wainwrights.

Note: As is obvious from a reading of the novel, there are innumerable faceless or nameless actors in the drama of The Grapes Of Wrath: i.e., the tractor drivers, the truck driver who gives Tom a lift, Mae and Al and the two truckers in the roadside restaurant, the one-eyed filling station attendant who hates his boss, the auto dealers, camp officials, sheriffs, storekeepers. All of them in a small way at least are to be regarded as commentators on the social situation in the novel. They are all flat (stereotype).

Analysis

Themes

For my instance the title comes from the plot. The Joad family and a lot of other were forced to leave their home farm to find work in California but there they weren't welcome and therefore hated and less paid. As a reason in the souls of the people, the grapes of wrath were ripening very fast. These people were ready now to struggle against that prejudice.

Narrative Process

In my opinion Steinbeck himself is the narrator because in preparation for writing this novel, Steinbeck went to Oklahoma, joined some migrants and rode with them to California. Once in California, he stayed with these migrants, living with them in Hooversville, joining them in their search for work. He made several trips to various camps to observe first-hand the living and working conditions of these migrants. It is a third-person narrator. It only one point of view, the view of the narrator who knows everything and every thought. In the novel there are no inner-monologues.

Setting

The setting is around Oklahoma, Texas, the desert of California and the high mountains of California as well. It describe the flight of the Jaods from their deserted home in Oklahoma to California. They were in several camps and had never found a place were they could build a house.

Structure and Language

During the narrative parts of the novel, Steinbeck keeps his style as simple as possible. It's important for him to maintain the very basic elements of the story. For the dialogues he uses dialect, which sometimes isn't that easy to follow. But Steinbeck wants to keep the realistic nature of the character's speech. Because the majority of the novel is on the narrative element, he maintains as much as possible a straightforward narrative style.

In the intercalary chapters, he varies his style considerably. Sometimes he uses a symbolic approach combined with realistic description (turtle, chapter 3) Some of the chapters are almost poetic in their style. Some are essays or historical accounts of past events. They are sometimes quite difficult to read (especially the descriptions of the landscape). The action is presented straight forward and there are no subplots.

Interpretation

To interpret the novel you only have to look at its history and at this question.

Question: Briefly describe the biographical and historical background which produced The Grapes of Wrath. Given this context, how was the novel received at its publication, and more recently?

Answer: First of all, John Steinbeck knew intimately the country and the people about which he wrote. Born and raised in the Salinas Valley in California, he lived most of his first forty years there (and much of his writing until recently was set in that locale). Furthermore, in the mid-thirties he became aware of and disturbed about the conditions of migrant workers in general (he had observed them in his own countryside, in California) and the plight of those who were forced to flee from the Dust Bowl of parts of Kansas and Oklahoma in particular. He wrote newspaper articles on the subject in 1935 and 1937, having gone to Oklahoma and made the westward trek to California with the migrant workers themselves. (The latter series of articles was published as a pamphlet called Their Blood Is Strong.) It needs hardly be added that other published commentary of the period-excepting that which defended certain ownership and public interests in the states most involved, such as California and Oklahoma-corroborates Steinbeck's journalistic findings which he metamorphosed into fiction.

At its publication in 1939 the novel was received essentially as a social document and a work of social protest, by both its admirers and its detractors. It was acclaimed, even in the form of a Pulitzer Prize to Steinbeck; it was widely discussed and debated in newspapers, magazines and on the radio; it was of course turned into a movie; and it was in some places banned and burned, for its so-called revolutionary socio-economic theories (for the charge of 'Red!' was as panicked, as all-inclusive and as vaguely defined at that period of American history as it has been in more recent years), for its so-called unfair and untrue report of the conditions of migrant laborers, and for its so-called dirty language.

When some of the first furor over the novel died down, however, critics began to look at it from an artistic point of view and to ask the question which is still being asked and answered pro and con-is it art or propaganda? Or, in fact, does one have to choose between the two? Critics of each decade since its publication have tended to look upon it with the going critical attitudes and habits of their group, with a general shift from the sociological readings toward artistic critiques which include everything from Steinbeck's various philosophies (humanism, pragmatism, biological theory of man, non-teleological thought, agrarianism-how well these come across in the context of the novel), his alternations between the dreamlike and the real (fantasy, allegory, symbolism), his ideas of good and evil, the individuality or universality of his characters, his mystical symbolism.

Cannery Row

Key scene     page 1

Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said "whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches," by which he meant everybody. Had the man looked into another he might have said, "Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men", and he would meant the same thing.

I have chosen this scene because it shows the whole atmosphere in Cannery Row. Cannery Row is a real city in Monterey, California where the whole story takes place. It is a fishing village with a couple of houses where only poor but contended people live. In Cannery Row there is the Western Biological Laboratory where Doc does his work, the Flophouse where Mack and the boys live, Dora's Bear Flag Restaurant, the whore house of the town, Lee's grocery, the boiler of the family Malloy and at last Henri's unfinished boat. Everywhere are uncompleted and dirty things like rusty pipes, rusty boilers, weeds and even a broken truck. All this things give the novel a untidy atmosphere. That metal scrap which is laying around expresses that the people don't care about their environment. For them it is unnecessary in which trash they have to live but for them it is important to be good hearted, to help others and to have a strong charity. As an illustration the boys live in an old dilapidate house, but they didn't care of it. What they want is to make everyone happy and especially Doc with a party. After the first party failed they didn't surrender to give Doc a surprising party because indeed they wanted to do something nice for Doc. Another example is Doc he is like a father to the people in Cannery Row. He helps everywhere he could.

Grapes of Wrath

Key scene   page 55

Then the small farmers from Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma lost their land and came out west. Homeless and hungry, two hundred thousand, and then many more, came over the mountains. They were hungry and they were fierce. They had thought and hoped to find a home but instead they only found hatred. Okies - the owners hated them. The owners were soft and the Okies were strong. The owners were well-fed and the Okies were starving to death. The shopkeeper hated the Okies as well because they had no money to spend. The Okies wanted only three things land, food and work. And the Californians hated them for it.

This story is set in North America in the 1930s. For a long time, the Small farmers of Oklahoma and other central states of the USA were forced to leave their land because very little rain fell. The poor soil broke up and turned to dust. Then the strong winds blew away the dust and the soil deserted. These farmers had to borrow money from the banks. But during the Depression in the late 1920s, trade stopped. Many banks lost their money and had to close. The remaining banks were afraid to lend the money to anyone. Small farmers like the Joads had no land, no crops and no money. They had all heard of California, with its beautiful weather and large crops of fruit and vegetables. California was a big state and the farmers there needed people to pick their crops. So the homeless farmers of Oklahoma decided to make the long and difficult journey to the West. They hoped to find work there and one day have land of their own. But in the rich land of California, the farmers also had problems. There was too much fruit and the farmers could not sell it. They could not pay the people who had come to pick the fruit. The farmers were making no profit and were in debt themselves. They knew that next year their land would belong to the bank and were afraid that the people from Oklahoma ‑ the Okies ‑ would take their land. Therefore the Californians gave the Okies so little money for their work that they and their children starved and couldn't save money. All over the state of California fruit was left to rot. Men burnt the coffee and the corn they had grown. They threw the potatoes into the rivers so that, the people could not have them. And fruit was wasted and good food destroyed to keep prices high. A million hungry People saw good food destroyed. Children starved and the smell of rotting fruit filled the country. In the souls of the people, the grapes of wrath were ripening. They were ready now for a terrible harvest, for a time of anger and destruction.