The Grapes of Wrath - Estimated Read Time = 10 hours
This Article - Estimated Read Time = 15 minutes
Time This Article Saves You = 9 hours and 45 minutes
*Most books need to be read twice before they can really be understood. This article saves you time & effort by helping you reach a solid understanding with just one read.
The Grapes of Wrath - Podcast Episode
The Grapes of Wrath is often considered John Steinbeck’s greatest work, which is saying something, since he’s one of only six Americans to ever win the Nobel Prize for Literature. That alone places this book in league with a handful of others, collectively regarded as the best American novels ever written.
For many (myself included) a high school assignment involving Of Mice & Men, Steinbeck’s shorter novel, was our first introduction to him. That was the extent of my familiarity with Steinbeck before diving into The Grapes of Wrath myself earlier this summer.
This novel contains a vast amount of American history I knew almost nothing about. I didn’t expect to learn about The Great Depression and The Great Dustbowl, the subsequent migration to California, and what awaited those traveling families when they arrived. In this novel, Steinbeck masterfully ushers the reader into a direct experience of all of this, through a single family’s story—the Joad’s.
The Grapes of Wrath relays some harsh American history, and in doing so, illustrates the strength that a family offers to us. Even more so, it encourages us to expand our understanding of who so happens to constitute “family” for us.
Story Recap . Spoiler Alert!
One aspect of the novel I thoroughly enjoyed was figuring out its structure. Throughout the novel, two consistent styles of chapters persist.
The longer plot-driven chapters that move the Joad family’s narrative forward.
The shorter, lyric chapters, interspersed throughout.
In other novels, I’ve found constant shifts in point-of-view and tense confusing and disorienting. But not here.
Steinbeck manages to limit his shifts between two alternating styles. So the reader knows what to expect, and the shifts aren’t so jarring.
What’s fascinating is that if you removed the lyric chapters, you still have the entire Joad family narrative. So, theoretically, the book could exist without them.
Which leads the question, why are they there? What do they contribute?
The Lyric Chapters
I’d say they’re meant primarily to set a vibe. To create a feeling. To provide a consistent tone and atmosphere from start to finish.
That’s what why the style of the lyric chapters is so different, because they’re intended to provide feeling. To give the reader a broader sense of the context the Joad family exists within, and to feel that choking, laboring atmosphere marked by helpless struggle and exploitation.
Also, they reveal that the Joad family’s story isn’t unique, which renders them a window, providing a glimpse into what thousands of families endured in this migration.
Crooked car dealers. The immutable iron tractor. Salt-of-the-earth truck drivers. And the generosity born from struggle. The lyric chapters add so much.
They contribute something that the Joad narrative can’t. And, obviously, the Joad family contributes something but the lyric chapters can’t. They’re two independent acts of communication, like two strands woven together masterfully to deliver one final stroke.
In that regard, it remains true to say that the story of the Joad family would be complete if you sliced out and removed all of the lyric chapters. You would still have the Joad story. But what you wouldn’t have is The Grapes of Wrath.
Now, the actual story of the Joad family.
The Narrative Chapters
The book opens with Tom Joad on his way home, hitching a ride with a truck driver, after being locked up for four years in prison. He’d killed a man with a shovel, but only after the guy stuck him with a knife first.
After leaving the truck, he stumbles upon Jim Casy, the preacher, who proceeds to explain that preaching is no longer his vocation. The old preacher seems lost, and tags along with Tom for the time being.
The two reach Tom’s childhood home only to find it abandoned. They puzzle over the absence, until an old friend, Muley Graves, approaches and provides explanation.
The land hasn’t produced food.
So, the sharecroppers haven’t been able to pay their due.
So, the bank has seized everyone’s land.
Therefore, everyone has left, on the promise of better work and life in California. Tom’s family hasn’t left yet. But they’ve gathered over at his Uncle John’s place, and are set to leave any day.
The next morning, they reach his Uncle John’s place, and the family is reunited. In quick time, they decide to pack their belongings and make for California, the promised land.
As they leave, the party consists of thirteen people, and a dog.
Grandpa - who just can’t button his pants right.
Grandma - who’s constantly, “Pu-raising Gawd fur vittory.”
Ma Joad - the true strength of the family.
Pa Joad - Tom’s dad.
Uncle John - a man plagued with guilt over the death of wife.
Tom - in a way, he’s the main character; and in another way, he isn’t.
Noah - Tom’s older brother, who’s always been odd and prone to solitude.
Al - who loves trucks and women.
Rosasharn - Tom’s pregnant younger sister.
Connie - Rosasharn’s husband, and the father of her child to be.
Ruthie - the youngest girl.
Winfield - the youngest boy.
Jim Casy, the preacher - who tags along, trying to find his purpose again.
Route 66
The journey from Sallisaw, Oklahoma to California is anything but easy. They have less than $200 dollars, and they’re traveling in an old jalopy they’ve transformed into a truck. In other words, making it to California is anything but a guarantee.
But with courage, they begin the journey across the country, traveling the famed Highway 66. Slowly, over the course of the journey, members of the family are removed, one by one.
First, the dog dies. While they’re filling up at a gas station, it runs into the road and gets hit—a dark foreshadowing of what’s to come.
Then, Grandpa Joad dies. It seems he can't manage life away from his land. A stroke takes his life, and they bury him alongside the road.
Then, Grandma Joad dies. And while they’re stopped by a river, Noah wanders off, never to return.
Finally, they arrive in California. Only to find that all along, the worst was yet to come.
Hooverville
They arrive in a Hooverville, a village made of shacks and shanties where the migrant families live. Here, they’re quickly exposed to the violence and injustice of California.
At the mere sight of the Hooverville, Connie wanders off, never to return.
A man comes to recruit workers, but refuses to commit to any certain wage. A man speaks against this, and is almost arrested for it. He punches a cop and runs off. Tom trips the police officer, while he fires bullets through the camp after the escaping man. While he’s down, Jim Casy kicks him in the head, knocking him unconscious.
When the police officer regains consciousness, Jim Casy pleads guilty, saying he did everything. He’s arrested and taken away.
Word spreads that the Hooverville will be burned that night, so the family re-packs their belongings and sets out once more.
The Government Camp
After a narrow encounter with the rioters and burners, they find their way to the government camp, that the state has no jurisdiction over. Here they’re treated like humans, with decency and respect. And life is pleasant for a few weeks.
Here they enjoy toilets, hot showers, Saturday night dances, and the company of other pleasant people.
The only trouble is there’s no work. And money is running out. So, once again, they’re forced to leave.
Picking Peaches
They catch word of work picking peaches on a particular farm, and go there. On the drive in, they go past a group of people shouting and yelling. After picking peaches all day, Tom wanders out to see what all the fuss is about.
He learns this group formerly worked for the same farm, until wages were dropped to an unlivable amount. So, they went on strike.
He also finds that Jim Casy, the old preacher, has been released from jail and is essentially the leader of this group.
That night, a group of hired men come to bust up the strike. Their strategy for doing so—kill the leader, Jim Casy. Which they do, in an awful scene, where the preacher is struck down in complete innocence.
In that moment, Tom loses it, and kills the man who killed Jim Casy. He escapes afterwards, but in the fight, his face gets busted up.
He wakes the next morning to learn that the story’s been twisted against him, and that if he’s found, he’ll be killed. More than that, they know his face is busted, and are on the lookout for him.
To make matters even worse, with the strike busted, wages dropped again, to an unlivable amount. The family is forced to leave once more, to protect Tom and to find better work.
Picking Cotton
At this point, the party of thirteen plus a dog that left Sallisaw has now shrunk to just eight. Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop there.
The family finds work picking cotton (the work they did in Oklahoma). Tom hides out in the woods, while the rest of the family lives in one half of a train car.
Then, Tom leaves.
One night, Ma brings him food. The two talk, and it’s decided that it’s best for everyone if he leaves. In a difficult conversation, the two say goodbye to each other. And Tom disappears from the narrative, never to appear again.
Then, the rain comes, and Rosasharn goes into labor.
A downpour arrives, creating a flood. The men try to build a mud wall that keeps the water away from the boxcars, while she delivers the baby. The baby is born, but isn’t alive. The men succeed in building the wall, only to have a tree come crashing down upon it.
With the mud wall destroyed, the water continues to rise, even up into the boxcar. The family decides to leave, seeking better shelter elsewhere.
Here, Al parts from the family as well. Another family is staying in the other half of the boxcar, and he proposes to a young woman in that family. So, when the Joad’s leave, Al stays, to be with his fiancé.
With that, the number drops to six.
Final Barn Scene
The remaining Joad’s set out to find better shelter, and locate a barn. Inside, they find a father and son, sheltering from the rain as well.
The son is in decent health, but the father is dying. He’s given all of their food to boy, and is on the brink of starvation.
Ma Joad and Rosasharn lock eyes for a moment, and agree on a plan to save this man. The whole family shuffles to away to give privacy, while Rosasharn proceeds to breastfeed the man, this complete and utter stranger, with her milk that’s just come in. The man latches on. She smiles. And with that, the novel closes.
An Interpretation - A Broader Family
The first time I finished this novel, I was so confused.
First, Tom inexplicably falls out of the narrative, never to return. Then, the final scene involves a woman breastfeeding a man she’d never even met! What do you do with that?
Thankfully, a second read is always super helpful. What I found was that The Grapes of Wrath is a plea to understand all of humanity within the category of “family.”
Step One - The Main Character
One of the keys to interpreting The Grapes of Wrath is figuring out who the main character is. The novel opens in such a way that we assume Tom is. But then he falls out of the narrative in such a confusing fashion.
I think this was intentional on Steinbeck’s part, a way of securing our assumptions early, only to rip the rug out from under us in the closing section of the book.
Psychologically, it’s similar to Hitchcock’s classic film Psycho, where we’re introduced to the main character, only to have her murdered partway through the story. Then we’re left searching frantically for some other vantage point, only to find in the end we’ve moved into the mind of a psycho. Which is why that movie is so creepy.
In The Grapes of Wrath, Tom’s removal is used to convey something else. In short, Tom falling out of the narrative is meant to reveal that he’s not the main character—the family is.
This is one of those end-of-story twists that leads you to re-consider the entire narrative differently. It causes us to see how the essence of the story is the slow disintegration of this one particular family.
For example, with the loss of their property, their land in Oklahoma, the family suffers a devastating blow. They’re forced to leave, and in leaving the land, they lose Grandpa Joad as well. As we soon find that he cannot survive apart from the land that made him who he is. So, once removed, he quickly fades and dies.
Without Grandpa, Grandma Joad dies also.
Then Noah wanders off. When the family was stable, he had a place within it. But when they enter such duress, he concludes that he isn’t able to contribute in the same fashion as Al and Tom, not in any meaningful way. So, he chooses to leave in order to remove himself as a burden.
He’s trying to help the family, but when the family is understood to be the protagonist, Noah’s loss, clearly, is anything but a gain.
Then, the pressure is too much, so Connie leaves.
Jim Casy is arrested, and then killed.
Tom is forced to leave, because his presence is endangering the family.
Rosasharn’s baby is still born.
Finally, Al leaves, staying with his fiancé while the remaining family members move on.
Each one of these losses is a blow that renders the real hero of the story weaker—the family. And this narrative of slow disintegration demonstrates that the one who really suffered throughout this historical oppression was families. Families bore the burden, and were torn apart.
But when it comes to novel’s meaning, that’s only the first step.
Step Two - The Strength Drawn
What the novel also demonstrates is the strength drawn by individuals in the face of such suffering, and the role the family structure played in cultivating such ability to sacrifice and contribute in these ways.
For example, the opening and closing lyric chapters both portray women and children looking to the family’s man to see if the latest blow had broken him.
“The women studied the men’s faces secretly, for the corn could go, as long as something else remained.”
“After a while the faces of the watching men lost their bemused perplexity and became hard and angry and resistant. Then the women knew that they were safe and that there was no break. Then they asked, What’ll we do? And the men replied, I don’t know. But it was all right. The women knew it was all right, and the watching children knew it was all right. Women and children knew deep in themselves that no misfortune was too great to bear if their men were whole.”
The closing lyric chapter mirrors it, saying this.
“The women watched the men, watched to see whether the break had come at last. The women stood silently and watched. And where a number of men gathered together, the fear went from their faces, and anger took its place. And the women sighed with relief, for they knew it was all right—the break had not come; and the break would never come as long as fear could turn to wrath.”
The men were able to draw such strength, even in the face of such awful circumstances, because they had to, for the sake of their families.
This same theme is played out over and over again with the Joad family.
For example, Al Joad is practically a kid prior to their migration, a teenager wavering on the edge of adulthood. The move forces him to step up and oversee the selection and care of their old jalopy truck, which he does well from beginning to end.
Tom gains the strength not to fight back, against the rioters outside Hooverville, in order to protect his family. It goes against his own internal values, but by the comfort and encouragement of his mother, he’s able to sacrifice his own sense of dignity to protect the rest of them.
At the book’s open, Jim Casy is lost, without meaning or direction in life. Then, the Joad’s adopt him. As part of a family, he finally learns love, and to sacrifice for others. Which he does by covering for Tom, letting himself be arrested in Hooverville.
Ma’s role overall is an interesting study. We’re introduced to her with this character sketch.
“Her eyes seemed to have experienced all possible tragedy and to have mounted pain and suffering like steps into a high calm and a superhuman understanding. She seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken. And since old Tom and the children could not know hurt or fear unless she acknowledged them, she had practiced denying them in herself. And since, when a joyful thing happened, they looked to see whether joy was on her, it was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate material… She seemed to know that if she swayed the family shook, and if she ever really deeply wavered or despaired the family would fall, the family will to function would be gone.”
Steinbeck has created a juxtaposition here, between the families of the lyric chapters and the Joad family. The lyric chapters give credit to the father and husband for this stabilizing role. But this section clearly pays the honor to Ma Joad.
Perhaps it’s Steinbeck’s way to acknowledge that not every family needs to operate in exactly the same manner, but to say that the family structure in general does both offer and draw out the strength from each of its members.
All that to say, the second step in interpreting the novel is the recognition that relationships, and in particular family attachments, give us the ability to draw strength from within that we are unable to access alone.
Step Three - The Broader Family
Now, for the third and final step. This part centers around the famed and confusing ending to this celebrated novel—Rosasharn breastfeeding a complete stranger in a barn.
To make sense of this, we have to follow her story from the beginning.
When we meet her, Rosasharn is excited to form her own family. She’s married to Connie, and expecting her first child. Then, over the course of the novel, her dreams fall apart. Connie leaves. Her baby is stillborn. And the family that she desired, and possessed, is now no more.
This disintegration leaves her at a loss in terms of direction and purpose in her life. Then, at the very close to the book, they meet the father and son who are in desperate need. She’s able to offer her breastmilk, nourishment from her very own body, to save this man’s life. And as she does so a smile spreads across her face.
In this scene, Rosasharn smiles because she embraces the idea the novel is attempting to communicate—that we don’t need to belong to a particular family in order to draw strength from it, because all of humanity is our family. So, anytime someone is suffering, we can sacrifice and step up to contribute there, because they too are family—part of the broader family of humanity to which we all belong.
That is the main message of the novel.
We see it with Rosasharn’s initially confusing ending. We see it with Jim Casy, learning to sacrifice for the Joad’s, and then extending that ability to the rest of humanity. We see it in the failure of the Californians to embrace the idea, rendering these families as less than human in order to justify treating them as such. And we see it even in Tom’s final words to his mother, as he encourages her to see him in the lives of so many others.
They sat silent in the coal-black cave of vines. Ma said, “How’m I gonna know ‘bout you? They might kill ya an’ I wouldn't know. They might hurt ya. How’m I gonna know?”
Tom laughed uneasily, “Well, maybe like Casy says, a fella ain’t got a soul of his own, but on’y a piece of a big one—an’ then—”
“Then what, Tom?”
“Then it don’ matter. Then I’ll be all aroun’ in the dark. I’ll be ever’where—wherever you look. Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. If Casy knowed, why, I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad an’—I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folks eat the stuff they raise an’ livin’ in the houses they build—why, I’ll be there, too.
Steinbeck’s message is that if only we would embrace one another, all of humanity as family, then the occurrences like what The Grapes of Wrath records wouldn’t happen ever again. And that is why The Grapes of Wrath is a plea to understand all of humanity within the category of “family.”
Closing Thoughts - The Strength of a Family
I’ve seen the principle at play in my own life, that having familial attachments cultivates a willingness to sacrifice, and can draw the best out of you.
For that reason, I agree that marriage and family structures often grow us as individuals, and imbue us with a strength greater than what we had before. Now, that’s not to say that every person needs marriage and children to learn how to love others well. But at least in my case, it’s definitely helped.
If that’s a commitment you’re considering, Pride & Prejudice offers some wisdom that I’d highly recommend. However, with The Grapes of Wrath, because the meaning of the novel extends beyond these structures, it follows that my own wrestling with it should as well.
The pattern throughout the book is that “The Haves” feel threatened by the “Have Nots.” This sparks fear initially, but that quickly rises into anger, and then matures into fully formed hatred. That emotional path is what leads, at least in this novel, to one group of people hating, abusing, and oppressing another.
Now clearly, nobody wants to be marked by that kind of behavior. So, the question to consider is this—how do we avoid that?
Perhaps what’s most helpful to recognize is that the novel’s unfolding leads us to identify with the migrant people, like the Joad’s, and sympathize with their plight. But in our own lives, we could just as easily slip into the role of the Californians. Not that you ever have, or will. But retaining that understanding, that the potential lies within us, fosters a helpful self-awareness.
The best deterrent may be maintaining the belief in every person’s inherent worth and dignity, not just as a belief we subscribe to, but as a conviction lived out in our interactions with others always.
All that to say, it may not be families migrating across the country, shacking up in Hooverville’s outside your door, that put you ill at ease. It may just be a co-worker who’s a jerk. Or the neighbor who’s lawn is unkempt and who lights fireworks off at 11:30 p.m. on a Tuesday. Or the person who is so politically other than you, that you’ve already reduced them to a straw man, and have failed to consider the other aspects of their life that manifest their humanity.
In the wake of all kinds of unpleasant interactions, it’s easy to take a frustrating person and strip their humanity away, even if only as a mental exercise. But the work of maintaining an understanding of their dignity is significant. Because in discarding their humanity, as the novel illustrates, we begin also to displace our own.