The Grapes of Wrath

by John Steinbeck

I’m gettin’ tired way past where sleep rests me.

“Why, I feel like people again.”

Ever hear of the army doing anything right?

The stars came down wonderfully close and the sky was soft. Death was a friend, and sleep was death’s brother.

There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange.

“You can’t sin none,” said Pa. “You ain’t got no money. Jus’ sit tight. Cos’ you at leas’ two bucks to sin, an’ we ain’t got two bucks amongst us.” “Yeah! But I’m a-thinkin’ sin.” “Awright. You can think sin for nothin’.”

“I’m learnin’ one thing good,” she said. “Learnin’ it all a time, ever’ day. If you’re in trouble or hurt or need—go to poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help—the only ones.”

they was nice fellas, ya see. What made ’em bad was they needed stuff.

Rosasharn oughta get milk. Think Ma’s gonna wanta starve that baby jus’ ’cause a bunch a fellas is yellin’ outside a gate?”

You didn’ do it for fun no way. Doin’ it ’cause you have to. ’Cause it’s you.

‘the on’y thing you got to look at is that ever’ time they’s a little step fo’ward, she may slip back a little, but she never slips clear back.

They seldom blinked their eyes. It was as though they were afraid something might happen in the split second of darkness.

“Gives ya a funny feelin’ to be hunted like. I’m gittin’ mean.”

Casy! He talked a lot. Used ta bother me. But now I been thinkin’ what he said, an’ I can remember—all of it. Says one time he went out in the wilderness to find his own soul, an’ he foun’ he didn’ have no soul that was his’n. Says he foun’ he jus’ got a little piece of a great big soul. Says a wilderness ain’t no good, ’cause his little piece of a soul wasn’t no good ’less it was with the rest, an’ was whole. Funny how I remember.

Then I’ll be all aroun’ in the dark. I’ll be ever’where—wherever you look. Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. If Casy knowed, why, I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad an’—I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folks eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build—why, I’ll be there.

Fella had a team of horses, had to use ’em to plow an’ cultivate an’ mow, wouldn’ think a turnin’ ’em out to starve when they wasn’t workin’. Them’s horses—we’re men.

Use’ ta be the fambly was fust. It ain’t so now. It’s anybody. Worse off we get, the more we got to do.”

“Go down an’ tell ’em. Go down in the street an’ rot an’ tell ’em that way. That’s the way you can talk.