John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. (/ˈstaɪnbɛk/; February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American author and the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature winner. Many of his works are considered classics of Western literature. During his writing career,

John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. (/ˈstaɪnbɛk/; February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American author and the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature winner. Many of his works are considered classics of Western literature. During his writing career, he authored 33 books.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece and part of the American literary canon. In the first 75 years after it was published, it sold 14 million copies.

The plot

The narrative begins just after Tom Joad is paroled from McAlester prison, where he had been incarcerated after being convicted of homicide in self-defense. While hitchhiking to his home near Sallisaw, Oklahoma, Tom meets former preacher Jim Casy, whom he remembers from his childhood, and the two travel together. When they arrive at Tom's childhood farm home, they find it deserted. Disconcerted and confused, Tom and Casy meet their old neighbor, Muley Graves, who tells them the family has gone to stay at Uncle John Joad's home nearby. Graves tells them that the banks have evicted all the farmers. They have moved away, but he refuses to leave the area.

The next morning, Tom and Casy go to Uncle John's. Tom finds his family loading their remaining possessions into a Hudson sedan converted into a truck; with their crops destroyed by the Dust Bowl, the family has defaulted on their bank loans, and their farm has been repossessed. The family sees no option but to seek work in California, which has been described in handbills as fruitful and offering high pay. The Joads put everything they have into making the journey. Although leaving Oklahoma would violate his parole, Tom decides it is worth the risk, and invites Casy to join him and his family.

Traveling west on Route 66, the Joad family finds the road crowded with other migrants. In makeshift camps, they hear many stories from others, some returning from California, and the group worries that California may not actually be as rewarding as suggested. The family dwindles on the way: Grampa dies along the road, and they bury him in a field; Granma dies close to the California state line; and both Noah (the eldest Joad son) and Connie Rivers (the husband of the pregnant Joad daughter, Rose of Sharon) leave the family. Led by Ma, the remaining members realize they must continue on, as nothing is left for them in Oklahoma.

Reaching California, they find the state oversupplied with labor; wages are low, and workers are exploited to the point of starvation. The big corporate farmers are in collusion and smaller farmers suffer from collapsing prices. All police and state law enforcement authorities are on the side of the growers. At the first migrant Hooverville camp they stop at in California, Casy knocks down a deputy sheriff who is about to shoot a fleeing worker who has alerted others that the labour recruiter travelling with the officer will not pay the wages he is promising. Weedpatch Camp, one of the clean, utility-supplied camps operated by the Resettlement Administration, a New Deal agency, offers better conditions but does not have enough resources to care for all the needy families, and it does not provide them with work or food. Nonetheless, as a Federal facility, the camp protects the migrants from harassment by local deputies.

In response to the exploitation, Casy becomes a labor organizer and tries to recruit for a labor union. The Joads find work as strikebreakers in a peach orchard. With everyone picking for most of the day, they still only get paid enough to provide a basic supper for the night and some food for the next day. The next morning the peach plantation announces that the pay rate for the picked fruit has been reduced by half. Casy is involved in a strike that turns violent. When Tom witnesses Casy's fatal beating, he kills the attacker and takes flight. The Joads quietly leave the orchard to work at a cotton farm, where Tom remains at risk of being arrested, and possibly lynched, for the homicide.

Knowing he must leave the area or risk being caught and his family blacklisted from working, Tom bids his mother farewell and vows to work for the oppressed. The rest of the family continues to pick cotton and pool their daily wages so they can buy food. Rose of Sharon's baby is stillborn. Ma Joad remains steadfast and forces the family through the bereavement. With the winter rains, the Joads' dwelling is flooded and the car disabled, and they move to higher ground. In the final chapter of the book, the family takes shelter from the flood in an old barn. Inside they find a young boy and his father, who is dying of starvation. Ma realizes there is only one way to save the man. She looks at Rose of Sharon and a silent understanding passes between them. Rose of Sharon, left alone with the man, goes to him and has him drink of her breast milk.

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.

Themes

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

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.

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