An Ending, Part 2: Rose of Sharon's Gift

The novel ends with an epic flood, almost Biblical in proportion, that forces Ma and Pa -- with Rose of Sharon, Ruthie and Winfield in tow -- to find higher ground.  In part they are spurred on to aid Rose of Sharon's health as she has just lost her baby and is still feeling unwell, both physically and emotionally.  They seek shelter in a barn, only to encounter a boy and his father, who is dying of hunger and can no longer digest solid food. The novel ends when Rose of Sharon

        loosened one side of the blanket and bared her breast. "You got to," she said.  "there." Her hand                moved behind his head and supported it.  Her fingers moved gently in his hair.  She looked up and            across hte barn, and her lips came together and smiled mysteriously (455).

What is the significance of this gesture and the image this scene is describing?

An Ending, Part 1: Tom's Speech

 Tom Joad, the moral center of the The Grapes of Wrath, abruptly exits the novel in chapter 28.  In order to escape possible arrest and to save his family from the effects of his problems, he decides (with the approval of Ma) to do the unthinkable: leave the family.  In his conversation with Ma he gives his famous speech which can be interpreted as a moment of spiritual insight, a gesture of solidarity or a call to action. He says (in part), "I'll be ever'where-- wherever you look. Wherever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there.  Where they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there"(419).  While not the end of the novel, it is arguably the ending of its most important story arc. 

What is the significance of this gesture and the image this scene is describing?

Social and Political Institutions Under the Microscope

 

Grapes of Wrath is a litmus test for social and political instutions of Depression Era America.  The novel portrays business owners and workers, police and strikers, govenrment official and ordinary Americans.  What does the novel tell us about various social and political instutions like the government, the police, landowners, unions, religion, and ordinary Americans?

Dreams and Epiphanies

 The Joad family begin an epic journey with dreams and hopes.  Grandpa, for one,  imagines a life of ease picking  grapes and eating all the fruit he wants.  Rose of Sharon and Connie imagine a successful career as a radio operator with a new house for the new baby and ice.  Yet, along the way they learn harsh truths about their new reality from the cost of labor, discrimination, and suffering endemic to the human condition.

What is one dream or illusion that they have that is shattered or that they stubbornly hold despite all evidence to the contrary?  What is one epiphany or enlightenment they learn?  Is there a connection between the two?  

The Violent Bear It Away

Grapes of Wrath begins when Tom Joad, imprisoned for homicide, returns home on parole.  Near the end of the novel, in a shocking scene of violence, Jim Casy, the preacher who no long preaches -- now a union organizer -- is brutally murdered by the police and Tom attacks the police with their own weapon, probably killing one of them.  Yet, despite the fact the film is bracketed with violence, there are other moments of peaceful resistance as when Huston and Tom thwart an attempted riot and do not seek vengeance on the infiltrators. 

Is the novel taking a stand on violence?  Under what conditions does it flourish?  Is it ever justified?  What about things like self-defense, vengeance or political action?  Is violence inevitable -- or is there a better way?

The Monster

 In Chapter 5 we learn about the insuperable force that lays waste to the farms and homes of Dust Bowl farmers.  This implacable beast stops for no man: "those creatures don't breathe air, don't eat side meat.  They breathe profits; they eat interest on money"(32)"  This beast destroys the farmhouses and barns and fields of the farmers evicting them from the land they have tilled for generations.

What is this "monster"?  Why is it so ruthless and destructive?  What kinds of attitudes, actions and strategies are a response (or at least seen as a response) to this fearsome foe?

All That Lives is Holy

 Religion plays an outsized role in the lives of the Joads and their fellow migrants.  Yet, the closest thing to a preacher in the story, Jim Casy, is a preacher who has renounced his vocation and who voices controversial views that depart from orthodox Christainity.  Early in the novel he proclaims, "The hell with it! There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue.  There's just stuff that people do"(23)  He later adds, "[M]aybe that's the Holy Sperit -- the human sperit--the whole shebang.  Maybe all men got one big soul ever'body's a part of"(24).  Later when he is pressed to give a eulogy over the grave of Grampa he says, "This here ol'man jus' lived a life an 'jus died out it . . . He was alive, an' that's what matters.  An' now he's dead, an' that don't matter"(144).  He goes on to quote a Blake poem that states that "all that lives is holy"(144). 

What is the significance of Casy, the preacher who no longer preaches?  What is it telling us about religion in a world that is seemingly suffering from a catastrophic plague almost Biblical in proprtion? What is the novel's take on religion and spirituality?