The Grapes of Wrath

“…sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper, white bread, pickle, cheese, Spam, a piece of pie branded like an engine part.”

This passage describes the lunch of the tractor driver. It is a substantial and more than adequate meal, especially given the hunger of the remaining people on the farms. However, the branded pie and wax paper suggests something artificial, mass-produced, and divorced from the land on which he is working.

“Got to think of my own kids. Three dollars a day, and it comes every day.” 

The tractor driver tries to justify his acceptance of the job. Even though his work results in the dispossession and misery of 20 families, it guarantees him a decent and reliable wage. He uses the dubious and selfish logic that the imperative to support his own family justifies this.

“Maybe there’s nobody to shoot. Maybe the thing isn’t men at all.” 

The tractor driver responds to the soon-to-be-evicted farmer’s claim that he will fight the men who try and throw him off his land. The driver says this is impossible. It is not any person or persons who is responsible for the evictions but an inscrutable and all-powerful system, centered on property ownership with a life of its own.

“If I was still a preacher I’d say the arm of the Lord had struck.” 

Casy, the ex-preacher, remarks on the state of what used to be the Joads’s family home. The caved-in wall and cotton growing over everything creates a shocking impression of devastation. His comment also suggests that a terrible and non-human force was responsible.

“I seen turtles all my life. They’re always goin’ someplace. They always seem to want to get there.”

Tom releases a turtle he picked up as a present for one of his younger siblings. The creature immediately sets off with purpose in a certain direction. The turtle’s journey anticipates the upcoming journey of the Joads, and the equally blind basis on which they are making it.

“They don’t use mules for nothing but glue no more.” 

This is said by a used cars salesman to a migrant farmer trying to trade in his mules for a car. This comment suggests that the world of the farmer is being rendered valueless and obsolete by modern technology. It also captures the contempt in which salespeople typically hold the evicted farmers.

“The pain on that mattress there—that dreadful pain—that’s you.” 

An unnamed migrant says this to his wife as he reflects on leaving their home. A sense of place, he implies, is inseparably linked to who and what they are. This is specifically the case with regards to where his wife gave birth and the pain she suffered there.

“Seems too nice, kinda.”

This is what Ma says to Tom about before the family sets out on their journey. Her remark reveals a natural suspicion, borne of years of experience, about hopes for happiness in life. It also taps into the potentially deceptive character of the promises made regarding California.

“…gonna hear em’ talk, gonna hear ‘em sing…Gonna cuss an’ swear an’ hear the poetry of folks talkin.’” 

Casy explains to Tom and Ma why he wants to join them on the trip to California. He wishes to shed the last of his persona as a preacher and experience life amongst ordinary people. Specifically, he wants to explore the rhythm and beauty of ordinary language.

“It ain’t big enough. There ain’t room enough for you an’ me, for your kind an’ my kind.” 

A gas station owner speaks after a migrant farmer, trying to buy a tire, explains he is heading to California. His comment exposes a prejudicial attitude towards the migrants and a sense that they are somehow different from the resident Californians. As often happens with anti-migrant prejudice, space and the lack of it is a cipher for a deeper, irrational anxieties.

“Pretty soon you’ll be on the road yourse’f.”

Tom says this to a gas station owner. Initially, their interaction had been antagonistic when the owner asked whether the Joads had money. However, on seeing the worn quality of the owner’s clothes and his decaying gas station and shop, Tom realizes they share a common plight. Just as the big landowners forced the Joads on the road, so will the big gas station chains force this man out of business.

“A bag of bottles, syringes, pills, powders, fluids, jellies, to make their sexual intercourse safe, odorless, and unproductive.” 

Steinbeck describes the wife of a businessman as the couple approaches a roadside diner in an expensive car. The number of products and instruments suggests the superficiality and artificiality of her existence. Her alienation from life is further symbolized by her attitude toward sex, which is totally detached from its natural reproductive function.

“…reassure themselves that business is noble and not the curious ritualized thievery they know it is, […] that their lives are rich instead of the thin tiresome routines they know.”

Steinbeck describes the life of an archetypal businessman. He gathers with other businessmen in clubs to convince himself that business is about something more than just making money and exploiting people. He also tries to convince himself that his life has some significance and meaning, when on a deeper level he knows it is empty.

“But they’s still five hundred that’s so goddamn hungry they’ll work for nothin’ but biscuits.” 

The ragged man at the roadside migrant camp responds to Pa’s claim that he expects good wages in California. He explains that the landowners have deliberately tried to attract far more workers than they need for any given job. This is to drive down wages. Competition for work is so fierce and hunger so prevalent that some men will work just for food.

“Well, the pitchers sure do look nice.” 

Some unnamed migrants wonder what life will be like in California. One talks about the photographs he has seen and how beautiful the state looks. This is part of a dream and an illusion which is manufactured to lure them there.

“They ain’t human. A human being wouldn’t live like they do. A human being couldn’t stand it to be so dirty and miserable.” 

A service station employee says this to his colleague. The comment captures the perverse logic of anti-migrant prejudice. The very thing which should evoke sympathy, the dire living conditions of the migrants, is used as justification for their further dehumanization and exclusion.

“And it came about that owners no longer worked on their farms.”

Steinbeck describes how land ownership and agriculture evolved in California. From individual farmers eating what they grew, farming became business and industry, as land was consolidated into fewer and fewer hands. Eventually, landowners were divorced from any direct connection to the job of farming. This initiated the division between labor and capital in agriculture.

“Secret gardening in the evenings, and water carried in a rusty can.” 

Hungry and desperate for food, the migrants start surreptitiously growing crops on small patches of weed-covered land. Alongside their desperation, this betrays a deeper desire to have their own land and not merely work on someone else’s. The police are utterly ruthless in stamping out and destroying these miniature gardens.

“We was hungry—they made us crawl for our dinner.” 

In the government camp a woman explains her aversion to the concept of charity. This is borne of a time when, starving, her family was offered help by the Salvation Army. The price they paid though was their freedom and dignity. This ties into a broader idea in the novel: that religion seeks to create hierarchies and debase people.

“Who says it’s bad? Who dares to say it’s bad? Preachers—but they got their own kinda drunkenness.” 

An unnamed migrant talks about drinking and those who oppose it. He suggests that no one has the right to rob the poor of this pleasure, which brings people together and makes life’s hardships more bearable. Further, the opposition of preachers is hypocritical. This is because they find their own kind of intoxication in the frenzy and emotion of the sermon.

“In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”

Steinbeck describes the growing anger of the migrants. This is in response to the absurdity and monstrosity of a system which burns crops everyday to maintain high prices, while children die of pellagra. This anger is likened to the fermentation of grapes, which will eventually produce the wine of revolution.

“’F you ain’t got the buck, we’ll take it out of your first hunderd and fifty. That’s fair, and you know it.” 

An owner on a cotton plant explains to the migrants that they will have to pay for the bag which they will need to work. On one level this is just another instance, as seen with the company shop, of owners tricking and exploiting workers to effectively lower wages. It also symbolizes the total alienation of workers from the means of production.

“I’ll be ever’where—wherever you look. Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there.” 

This quote is from Tom’s iconic speech to Ma when he is about to leave the family and become an activist. His experiences with the strikers and the police and his time hiding alone have made him understand the meaning of Casy’s philosophy. This is the idea that humans are all part of a greater, collective soul, and holiness is to aspire towards it. It took the death of Casy for Tom to fully realize this and to become Casy in a sense by continuing his work.