Grapes of Wrath Summary

Grapes of Wrath Summary

Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Setting

The novel is set in Los Gatos, CA

Main Characters

Tom Joad- he has Just been released from prison as the novel begins, Tom is quick to fight but fundamentally decent. He loves his family and finds himself gradually radicalized by its slow disintegration.

Ma Joad- she has been blessed with the ability to improvise a meal or a bed from the barest of provisions, Ma's strength and resilience ultimately prove her the true bulwark of the family.

Jim Casy- he is a defrocked preacher turned itinerant philosopher. Jim gives voice to much of Steinbeck's own mistrust of organized religion and belief in social justice.

Rosasharn Joad Rivers- she is tom’s sister who sister matures from a fairly insufferable expectant mother into a woman capable of one of the most memorable sacrifices in American literature Under Ma's influence.

Uncle John Joad- he is drunk sometimes and holds himself responsible for his late wife's death. John’s most memorable scene comes when he sets the youngest Joad adrift in the river to bear mute witness against the suffering of all the Dust Bowl migrants.

Al Joad- suddenly becomes indispensable to his family, since he is the only one who can keep their precious truck running.

Plot Summary

Tom Joad, newly released from prison after serving a sentence for manslaughter, makes his way home, and along the way, he is joined by Jim Casy, a former preacher. Tom learns that his family has been evicted from the farm and has moved in with Uncle John. When the two men reach Uncle John’s home, they find the family, enticed by handbills advertising farm-labor jobs, preparing to drive to California. The Joads and Casy head out along Route 66, joining an exodus of poor tenant farmers heading west. They encounter many obstacles on the journey, as well as warnings that the jobs they expect in California are illusory. Grampa and Granma Joad die along the route, and Tom’s elder brother, Noah, decides to abandon the enterprise.

Upon arrival in California, they find that their troubles are far from over. They stop in a migrant camp, where they speak with a man named Floyd Knowles who informs them that jobs are scarce, available pay is poor, and families are literally starving to death in the makeshift migrant camps. Connie, the husband to Tom’s pregnant sister, Rose of Sharon, abandons her. When a man comes seeking for workers to pick fruit, Floyd asks for the proposed wages in writing. A policeman accuses him of communism and tries to arrest him. A fight breaks out, and when the policeman shoots at the fleeing Floyd, Casy knocks him out. Casy is arrested, and the Joad family heads to another town, where they are met by a hostile crowd gathered to keep migrants from Oklahoma and nearby states away. However, they later find a government-run camp Weedpatch, which is kept clean and organized by committees of residents, and Tom finds work.

After a month in the camp, Ma Joad declares that they must move on because of the scarcity of work. They are soon offered jobs picking peaches, but the pay is so low that they cannot afford an adequate dinner. Tom finds Casy, who is now organizing striking peach pickers. A group of men approaches the meeting under cover of darkness, and one of them strikes Casy with a pick handle, killing him. An enraged Tom kills that man before returning to his family. Fearful that Tom will be arrested, the Joads leave the peach farm.

They subsequently find good jobs picking cotton, as well as a home in a boxcar that they share with another family. Tom, who has gone into hiding, decides to become a labor organizer. When the cotton season comes to an end, the Joads struggle to find work again. Endless rains cause flooding, and Rose, Sharon’s baby is stillborn. The Joad family leaves when the rising waters begin to fill the boxcar. They soon reach a barn, in which they find a small boy and a starving man.

Themes

1. Inhumanity. 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.
2. Selfishness. Many of the evils that affect the Joad family and the migrants are a result of 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 depends on their devotion to the collective good, the migrants unite, sharing their dreams as well as their burdens in order to survive.