The Title

The title alludes to the words "grapes of wrath" in Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic." Howe's words, in turn, allude to Chapter 63, Verses 1 to 6, of the book of the prophet Isaiah in the Old Testament of the Bible. In these verses, Isaiah, who lived in the Eighth Century B.C., envisions the Lord in the role of the Messiah coming forth from the lands of the wicked after punishing their inhabitants. Arrayed in bloodstained robes, He tells Isaiah that He has trampled the enemies of Israel as if they were grapes from a bad harvest, thereby venting His wrath. The juice of these bad grapes—that is, the blood of the enemies of the Lord—splatters his robes. In Steinbeck's book, the grapes of wrath are the harvests planted by landowners and growers. Here are the pertinent verses from Isaiah as presented in the Douay-Rheims Bible, Challoner Revision:

63:1. Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bosra, this beautiful one in his robe, walking in the greatness of his strength. 
..I, that speak justice, and am a defender to save.
Edom... Edom and Bosra (a strong city of Edom) are here taken in a mystical sense for the enemies of Christ and his church.
63:2. Why then is thy apparel red, and thy garments like theirs that tread in the winepress?
63:3. I have trodden the winepress alone, and of the Gentiles there is not a man with me: I have trampled on them in my indignation, and have trodden them down in my wrath, and their blood is sprinkled upon my garments, and I have stained all my apparel.
63:4. For the day of vengeance is in my heart, the year of my redemption is come.
63:5. I looked about, and there was none to help: I sought, and there was none to give aid: and my own arm hath saved for me, and my indignation itself hath helped me.
63:6. And I have trodden down the people in my wrath, and have made them drunk in my indignation, and have brought down their strength to the earth.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored,
He has loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword
His truth is marching on.

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After the First World War turned European farmlands into battlefields, American agriculture prospered. To improve productivity, the U.S. agricultural industry borrowed money for machinery and more land. When Europe resumed production after the war, American farm owners received far less for wheat, corn, and other crops. Consequently, they had to struggle to repay loans. Banks began to seize the property of defaulting landowners and evict sharecroppers living and working on the farms. After the stock market crashed in 1929, the world economy entered a deep depression. On farms that escaped foreclosure, financial prolems worsened. Meanwhile, parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado experienced widespread soil erosion as a result of overplanting that stripped away grasses needed to hold the soil in place. Then, between 1934 and 1937, drought and wind turned these agricultural heartlands into what a newspaper called a "dust bowl." Banks seized more farms, leaving hundreds of thousands of sharecroppers and other farm laborers without work. Because these workers had little or no training in other occupations, their prospects for new employment were severely limited. As a result, many of them moved west, to California, responding to handbills advertising for field workers. Farm jobs in California were thought to be plentiful partly because of its favorable climate year round. The fictional Joad family, on whom Steinbeck’s novel centers, enters the stream of job seekers bound for California full of hope—and little else. 

Plot Summary
By Michael J. Cummings...© 2008

Drought settles in near the end of May in Oklahoma. Day after day, the sun scorches the crops, and soon the earth crusts over and turns to powder. By June, road traffic and wind carry the dust high into the air, and the sun becomes a “dim red circle,” the narrator says.

The country is already in the midst of a terrible economic depression. Now the hard times become even harder for Oklahomans making their living off the land, as well as for farm laborers in neighboring states. 

During this time, the Oklahoma state prison at McAlester releases a man of no more than thirty who hopes to resume working on his family's tenant farm. While hitchhiking home in his gray cap and cheap hardcloth suit, he approaches a roadside restaurant near Shawnee and sits on the running board of a truck emblazoned with capital letters: "OKLAHOMA CITY TRANSPORT." He mops his brow with his  cap. Inside the restaurant, the truck driver pays his bill and puts his change, two nickels, into a slot machine. No luck.

"They fix 'em so you can't win nothing," the driver tells the waitress.

"Guy took the jackpot not three hours ago," she says. "Three-eighty he got."

When the driver returns to his truck, the man on the running board asks for a ride. The driver notes the “No Riders” sticker on the windshield, but the hitchhiker says, “Sure—I seen it. But sometimes a guy’ll be a good guy even if some rich bastard makes him carry a sticker.”

The hitchhiker gets his ride. After the truck pulls out, the driver asks questions to pass the time, and his passenger introduces himself as Tom Joad. His father, old Tom Joad, is a sharecropper on a forty-acre farm in eastern Oklahoma. When the driver talks about his effort to improve himself—he’s taking a correspondence course in mechanical engineering—Joad takes a flask of whiskey from a coat pocket and offers the driver a swig. 

“A guy can’t drink liquor all the time and study like I’m goin’ to,” the driver says. 

Joad then takes two gulps and, later, another swallow. 

“You know where I come from, don’t you?” Joad says, aware that the driver has noticed his prison apparel. “Sure I been in McAlester,” Joad says. “Sure these is the clothes they give me when I come out. I don’t give a damn who knows it. An’ I’m goin’ to my old man’s place so I don’t have to lie to get a job.”
Just before the driver drops him at the turnoff to the Joad farm, Tom says he was sentenced to seven years for killing a man but got out in four for good behavior.

On the highway leading to the farm, Joad watches as the driver of a light truck deliberately swerves to hit a turtle. A tire strikes the edge of its shell and spins the turtle off the road. On its back, the turtle reaches out, finds a rock, turns itself over, and resumes its journey.

Along the way to the farm, Joad meets a lean, gray-haired man in overalls sitting against a tree, whistling and singing. It is Jim Casy, a preacher who baptized Tom when he was a boy. But he’s no longer a man of the cloth, he says, because the spirit isn’t in him anymore and because “I ain’t so sure of a lot of things.” Joad offers him a drink and he takes three good swallows. Casy says there was a time when he’d conduct a revival meeting, then go off into the grass with one of the girls. 

“I figgered there just wasn’t no hope for me, an’ I was a damned hypocrite.”

Now, he no longer accepts orthodox beliefs about sin and religion. What counts is love and belief in the human spirit, he says. Casy, unaware that Joad has been in prison, says, “Been travelin’ around?” Joad then brings him up to date: At a dance where there was plenty of alcohol going around, a man named Herb Turnbull “got a knife in me, an’ I killed him with a shovel layin’ there.” He was sentenced to seven years but paroled in four.

Casy, who ’s not sure what the future holds for him, tags along with Joad while they go to the farm. At the top of a hill, they look down on it. Joad notices right away that

“They ain’t nobody there.”

Banks had seized the land of the Joads and other sharecroppers. When land produces no crops, it has to be turned to another use and maybe sold to easterners who have expressed interest in owning a piece of land. Where do the families go? How do they eat? Where do the men get work? The bank can’t worry about those things. It is a monster that feeds on profit, the narrator says.

While Joad and Casy look over the old place, Muley Graves, an old friend of Tom’s, comes along with a gunnysack containing three rabbits he killed. When he and his wife and children were forced off the land, Muley decided to stick around while the rest of his family headed west. Now he just wanders “like a ol’ graveyard ghos,’” sleeping here, sleeping there. Tom asks Muley where his folks are and why the Joad place “is all smashed up.” 

Muley says the landowners hired a bulldozer to ram the house to force the Joads off the land. They moved to Tom’s Uncle John’s place, where they are working the cotton fields to make enough money to go to California. 

That night, Muley, Tom, and Jim Casy roast the rabbits and eat around the fire. When they see the glow of  headlights at the top of a nearby hill, Muley says they should hide because they are now trespassers on someone else’s land.  At first, Tom is reluctant to get up, saying, “I hate to get pushed around.” But Muley tells him that the car might be Willy Feeley’s. 

“He’s got a gun,” Muley says. “He’ll use it ‘cause he’s a deputy [sheriff].”

Tom, Muley, and Jim Casy hide in a field as the car pulls up and pans a spotlight around the area. Two men get out, look around, put out the fire, and then get back in the car and leave. Tom and his two companions then walk off and sleep in the countryside.

Before dawn, Tom and Jim begin the trek to Uncle John’s place while Muley goes his own way. When the two men arrive, Tom’s father is nailing rails to a Hudson Super Six sedan that he is converting into a pickup truck. 

“It’s Tommy come home,” Pa Joad says when he sees his son. A worried look crosses his face and he says, “You ain’t busted out? You ain’t got to hide?”
Tom explains everything. 

Then they go inside. When Ma sees Tom, she says, “Oh, Thank God!” After Tom tells her about the parole, her “joy was nearly like sorrow,” the narrator says.

Tom then gets reacquainted with his Grampa, who is a cantankerous, carping, mischievous old man with a dirty mouth; his Granma, who is just as tough as Grampa and full of the fire of old-time religion; and his older brother, Noah, who is calm, quiet, slow-moving, and never gets angry. Although he gives the impression that he is stupid and deformed, he is neither. But he is strange. Pa thinks he knows why. When Ma went into labor with Noah, the midwife had not yet arrived. Frantic with worry and fright by Ma’s screaming, he pulled the baby out, twisting it this way and that. When the midwife arrived, she had to “mold” the boy. Pa has felt guilty about the incident ever since and has always treated Noah kindly.

Other family members are out. Little Ruthie, twelve, and Winfield, ten—Tom’s youngest siblings—went with Uncle John to Sallisaw with a load of the Joads’ belongings to sell: tools, chickens, a pump, and so on. Rose of Sharon is with her husband, Connie Rivers, visiting his folks. Both are teenagers. Rose is pregnant. Al, sixteen, is gallivanting around. He likes girls and cars and is good at repairing and tuning engines. He looks up to Tom. 

Ma is optimistic about going to California. 

I like to think how nice it's gonna be, maybe, in California. Never cold. An' fruit ever'place, an' people just bein' in the nicest places, little white houses in among the orange trees. I wonder—that is, if we all get job an' all work—maybe we can get one of them little white houses. An' the little fellas go out an' pick oranges right off the tree.

The narrator tells the story in third-person point of view. Generally, the narrator is omniscient, or all-knowing, seeing and reporting the thoughts of the characters as well as witnessing and reporting the action. At times, however, he reports only the action without revealing the characters'  thoughts. The narration alternates between chapters centering on society, nature, universal themes, or background information and chapters centering on specific people and places. For example, Chapter 1 presents information about the the Dust Bowl and society's reaction to it. Chapter 2 centers on Tom Joad and a truck driver who gives Tom a ride home after his release from prison. Chapter 3 centers on a turtle that exhibits the kind of perseverance that sustains the Joad family during their journey west. Chapter 4 focuses on Tom and Jim Casy, a former preacher who tags along with Tom. Chapter 5 presents general information on how banks evict tenant farmers. Chapter 6 zeroes in on Tom, Casy, and Muley Graves at the abandoned Joad homestead. The narration continues to alternate chapters in this way, giving the novel a balanced structure. 

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Themes
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Kinship: Ma Joad repeatedly stresses the importance of family bonds. If the Joads stand together in familial love, they can have a meaningful and worthwhile life. Ma applies her philosophy to society as a whole, regarding all men as brothers. She welcomes Jim Casy and the Wilsons; she feeds hungry children at a migrant camp even though she has barely enough food for her own family. The example she sets greatly influences her daughter, Rose of Sharon, who, the end of the novel, nurses a starving man with her breast milk. 
Unity and Cooperation: Casy espouses unity and cooperation in his attempts to organize the migrant workers into a single voice that demands justice and fair wages. After Casy dies, Tom Joad decides to devote himself to carrying on Casy’s cause. Ma Joad also espouses unity and cooperation, stressing the importance of maintaining family ties and of cooperating with others to achieve common goals. After meeting the Wilsons on the road, she says, “Each’ll help each, an’ we’ll all git to California.”
Love: Casy, a former preacher, believes that loving fellow human beings and acting on their behalf is more important than ranting from the pulpit and warning people to live by the letter of the law. He willingly accepts blame and goes to jail for an offense that he did not commit. And he dies in the service of fellow human beings. Some scholars regard him as a Christ figure: His initials are J. C. and he lays down his life for others.
Perseverance in the Face of Hostility: The third chapter of the novel presents this theme when a truck deliberately runs over a turtle, knocking it to the side of the road. On its back, the turtle reaches out with its legs, grabs onto a rock, rights itself, and resumes its journey. This chapter foreshadows the response of the Joads to the troubles they face on their journey. 
Deceit: Landowners and labor contractors lure the impoverished to California with handbills promising jobs for everyone. This tactic is a ploy to attract more workers than needed and then to offer the jobs to those willing to accept meager wages.
Prejudice: Many Californians assume that Oklahoma migrants are the lowest of the low and give them a name, Okies, charged with negative connotations. “Okie means you’re scum,” one migrant worker tells Tom.
Greed: Car salesmen take advantage of migrants desperate for transportation to California. A business charges traveling migrants for water. Landowners pay migrants very low wages in order to turn a profit. 
Hope: Ma Joad never loses hope for a better future. Tom’s decision to continue Casy’s effort to organize workers and Rose of Sharon’s simple act of nursing a starving man both suggest Ma’s hope is not unfounded. Where people help each other, there is every reason to believe that good will come of it. 

Foreshadowing 

Chapter 3 foreshadows events in the rest of the novel. This chapter describes the southwest journey of a turtle on a concrete highway. After a light truck deliberately swerves to hit it, the turtle spins on its shell to the side of the road and comes to rest on its back. Reaching out with a foreleg, it finds a rock, pulls itself upright, and resumes its journey. The turtle symbolizes the Joad family on its journey west to California on Route 66, a concrete highway, and the light truck symbolizes the adversaries and obstacles they encounter along the way. Finally, the turtle's recovery and resumption of its journey symbolize the resolve of the Joads, led by Ma, to reach their destination and begin life anew.

Conflicts

The Joads must battle numerous forces, three of which are beyond their control: the severely depressed economy, the terrible drought, and the illnesses that kill Grampa and Granma Joad. Their human adversaries include demanding bankers who evict sharecroppers with bulldozers, greedy businessmen, corrupt law officers, and prejudiced middle- and upper-class citizens. The Joads also fight forces within themselves. For example, Pa Joad and Uncle John struggle against guilt for past deeds, and Tom Joad grapples with his headstrong ways and quick temper. Like the Joads, Jim Casy faces internal and external conflicts. In his soul, he struggles toward a new religious outlook. Outwardly, he battles unfair labor practices. 

Biblical Allusions and Overtones
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The plight of the Joads recalls two Old Testament stories: (1) the Israelites’ departure from Egypt for the Promised Land, as told in the Book of Exodus, and (2) the tribulations suffered by the innocent and upright Job, as told in the Book of Job. In addition, the life and death of Jim Casy recalls the life and death of Christ, as told in the New Testament gospels, and the title of the novel alludes to verses in the book of the prophet Isaiah in the Old Testament.
In the first Old Testament story, the Israelites leave Egypt after suffering years of oppression there. They then escape a pursuing Egyptian army. This part of the Bible story parallels the Joads’ departure from Oklahoma and the harassment of them by officers of the law. In the second story, the righteous patriarch Job suffers terrible ordeals, including the loss of possessions and family members, but never loses his faith in God. In Steinbeck’s novel, the Joads lose their home, the two oldest members of the family, and Rose of Sharon’s child; but, led by Ma, they never lose faith in God or hope for a better tomorrow. 
The gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John tell the story of the life and death of Jesus Christ. In these gospels, Jesus is depicted as (1) speaking in opposition to many of the views of the Pharisees, a group of Jewish laymen schooled in oral and written religious laws and practices; (2) preaching a message of love and repentance; (3) exalting the poor and the humble; and (4) dying on a cross for the sins of humankind. In Steinbeck's novel, Jim Casy rejects orthodox religious views, preaches universal brotherhood, works on behalf of the downtrodden migrant laborers, and dies when promoting their cause. It must be noted, however, that the orthodox views Casy rejects include some moral dictums established or validated by Christ. Moreover, Casy's idea of universal brotherhood is more akin to the teachings of 19th Century transcendentalists than to the teachings of Christ. Nevertheless, it seems clear that Steinbeck did intend to present Casy as a Christ figure. Even Casy's initials are the same as Christ's. 

For information on the title's allusion to the book of Isaiah, see Title, above.

Steinbeck's Writing Techniques

Steinbeck uses a variety of writing techniques in The Grapes of Wrath to enhance his presentation. One of them is his somewhat poetic descriptions of nature. They frequently employ personification, as in the following two paragraphs from Chapter 1 in which a cunning wind uproots corn (much as the banks and landowners root up the tenant farmers) but later cries and whimpers over the corn (perhaps in mockery).

The wind grew stronger, whisked under stones, carried up straws and old leaves, and even little clods, marking its course as it sailed across the fields. The air and the sky darkened and through them the sun shone redly, and there was a raw sting in the air. During a night the wind raced faster over the land, dung cunningly among the rootlets of the corn, and the corn fought the wind with its weakened leaves until the roots were freed by the prying wind and then each stalk settled wearily sideways toward the earth and pointed the direction of the wind.
The dawn came, but no day. In the gray sky a red sun appeared, a dim red circle that gave a little light, like dusk; and as that day advanced, the dusk slipped back toward darkness, and the wind cried and whimpered over the fallen corn. 

Watch the woman's face. If the woman likes it [a car] we can screw the old man. Start 'em on that Cad'. Then you can work 'em down to that '26 Buick. 'F you start on the Buick, they'll go for a Ford. Roll up your sleeves an' get to work. 

He was foolin' all the time [about wanting to see California]. I think he knowed it. An' Grampa didn' die tonight. He died the minute you took 'im off the place [the Oklahoma farm]."
"You sure a that?" Pa cried.
"Why, no. Oh, he was breathin'," Casy went on, "but he was dead. He was that place [the farm], an' he knowed it."
Uncle John said, "Did you know he was a-dyin'?"
"Yeah," said Casy. "I knowed it."
John gazed at him and a horror grew in his face. "An' you didn' tell nobody?"
"What good?" Casy asked.
"We--we might of did somepin."
"What?"
"I don't know, but--"
"No," Casy said, "you couldn' a done nothin'. Your way was fixed an' Grampa didn't have no part in it. He didn' suffer none. Not after fust thing this mornin'. He's jus' stayin' with the lan'. He couldn' leave it."

Along 66 the hamburger stands—Al & Susy's Place—Carl's Lunch—Joe & Minnie—Will's Eats. Board-and-bat shacks. Two gasoline pumps in front, a screen door, a long bar, stools, and a foot rail. Near the door three slot machines, showing through the glass the wealth in nickels three bars will bring. And beside them, the nickel phonograph with records piled up like pies, ready to swing out to the turntable and play dance music, "Ti-pi-ti-pi-tin," "Thanks for the Memory," Bing Crosby, Benny Goodman. At one end of the counter, a covered case; candy cough drops, caffeine sulphate called Sleepless, No-Doze; candy, cigarettes, razor blades, aspirin, Bromo-Seltzer, Alka-Seltzer. The walls decorated with posters, bathing girls, blondes with big breasts and slender hips and waxen faces, in white bathing suits, and holding a bottle of Coca-Cola and smiling—see what you get with a Coca-Cola. Long bar, and salts, peppers, mustard pots, and paper napkins. Beer taps behind the counter, and in back the coffee urns, shiny and steaming, with glass gauges showing the coffee level. And pies in wire cages and oranges in pyramids of four. And little piles of Post Toasties, corn flakes, stacked up in designs.

Among the symbols that Steinbeck uses in the novel are the following:

Dust: (1) Utter ruination of a way of life; death; (2) forces beyond the control of the Joads.
The Turtle: Perseverance of the Joads.
Light Truck That Hits the Turtle: Law officers and others hostile toward the Joads.
Bulldozer: The brute power of the unfeeling, indifferent banks.
Route 66: The lands traversed by Moses and the Israelites on their way toward Canaan.
The Thousands of Migrants on the Road: The Israelites in their exodus from Egypt.
California: False Promised Land.
Rose of Sharon: Fertile and plantable future for the Joads. Sharon is a fertile plain along the coast of Israel, and a rose of sharon is a shrub with showy flowers. Early in the novel, Rose is the showy flower; late in the novel, she is the fertile plain full of promise and nourishment for survival. In the Bible, the rose of Sharon is mentioned in Chapter 2, Verse 1, of the Canticle of Canticles (or Song of Solomon). 
Grapes: See Title.
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1.....Who is the most admirable character in the novel? Who is the least admirable? 
2.....Who is the most determined character?
3.....Which character undergoes the most change?
4.....In what ways is the ending of the novel optimistic and hopeful?
5.....In an essay, compare and contrast the treatment of migrant workers in the U.S. in the 1930s with the treatment that migrant workers receive today.
6.....Invent two characters who are looking for work during the Great Depression. Then write one page of conversation between them in a working-class dialect.
7.....Write an essay describing the condition of Oklahoma farmland during the Dust Bowl.
8.....What is sharecropping? What is  tenant farmer?
9.....Write an essay explaining why The Grapes of Wrath was frequently banned in some parts of the United States.
10. .Write an essay arguing that Steinbeck's fictional portrayal of the plight of migrant workers accurately reflected the real-life problems of the migrants.
11...Write an essay arguing that Steinbeck's fictional portrayal of the plight of migrant workers exaggerated the real-life problems of the migrants.
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