The Grapes of Wrath

by John Steinbeck

“Well, it makes you mad to hear a guy use big words. ’Course with a preacher it’s all right because nobody would fool around with a preacher anyway. But this guy was funny. You didn’t give a damn when he said a big word ’cause he just done it for ducks. He wasn’t puttin’ on no dog.” The driver was reassured. He knew at least that Joad was listening. He swung the great truck viciously around a bend and the tires shrilled. “Like I was sayin’,” he continued, “guy that drives a truck does screwy things. He got to. He’d go nuts just settin’ here an’ the road sneakin’ under the wheels. Fella says once that truck skinners eats all the time—all the time in hamburger joints along the road.” “Sure seem to live there,” Joad agreed. “Sure they stop, but it ain’t to eat. They ain’t hardly ever hungry. They’re just goddamn sick of goin’—get sick of it. Joints is the only place you can pull up, an’ when you stop you got to buy somepin so you can sling the bull with the broad behind the counter. So you get a cup a coffee and a piece pie. Kind of gives a guy a little rest.” He chewed his gum slowly and turned it with his tongue.

Bra dialog

Casy leaned forward excitedly. “You see,” he cried, “I seen it was that way, an’ I started thinkin’.” He waved his bony big-knuckled hand up and down in a patting gesture. “I got to thinkin’ like this—‘Here’s me preachin’ grace. An’ here’s them people gettin’ grace so hard they’re jumpin’ an’ shoutin’. Now they say layin’ up with a girl comes from the devil. But the more grace a girl got in her, the quicker she wants to go out in the grass.’ An’ I got to thinkin’ how in hell, s’cuse me, how can the devil get in when a girl is so full of the Holy Sperit that it’s spoutin’ out of her nose an’ ears. You’d think that’d be one time when the devil didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell. But there it was.” His eyes were shining with excitement. He worked his cheeks for a moment and then spat into the dust, and the gob of spit rolled over and over, picking up dust until it looked like a round dry little pellet. The preacher spread out his hand and looked at his palm as though he were reading a book. “An’ there’s me,” he went on softly. “There’s me with all them people’s souls in my han’—responsible an’ feelin’ my responsibility—an’ ever’ time, I lay with one of them girls.” He looked over at Joad and his face looked helpless. His expression asked for help.

“You should a got a wife,” said Joad. “Preacher an’ his wife stayed at our place one time. Jehovites they was. Slep’ upstairs. Held meetin’s in our barnyard. Us kids would listen. That preacher’s missus took a godawful poundin’ after ever’ night meetin’.”

‘The hell with it! There ain’t no sin and there ain’t no virtue. There’s just stuff people do. It’s all part of the same thing. And some of the things folks do is nice, and some ain’t nice, but that’s as far as any man got a right to say.’ ” He paused and looked up from the palm of his hand, where he had laid down the words.

“Come along,” said Joad. “Pa’ll be glad to see you. He always said you got too long a pecker for a preacher.” He picked up his coat roll and tightened it snugly about his shoes and turtle.

Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold. And all of them were caught in something larger than themselves. Some of them hated the mathematics that drove them, and some were afraid, and some worshiped the mathematics because it provided a refuge from thought and from feeling.

The tenant pondered. “Funny thing how it is. If a man owns a little property, that property is him, it’s part of him, and it’s like him. If he owns property only so he can walk on it and handle it and be sad when it isn’t doing well, and feel fine when the rain falls on it, that property is him, and some way he’s bigger because he owns it. Even if he isn’t successful he’s big with his property. That is so.” And the tenant pondered more. “But let a man get property he doesn’t see, or can’t take time to get his fingers in, or can’t be there to walk on it—why, then the property is the man. He can’t do what he wants, he can’t think what he wants. The property is the man, stronger than he is. And he is small, not big. Only his possessions are big—and he’s the servant of his property. That is so, too.”

The driver said, “Fellow was telling me the bank gets orders from the East. The orders were, ‘Make the land show profit or we’ll close you up.’ ” “But where does it stop? Who can we shoot? I don’t aim to starve to death before I kill the man that’s starving me.” “I don’t know. Maybe there’s nobody to shoot. Maybe the thing isn’t men at all. Maybe, like you said, the property’s doing it. Anyway I told you my orders.”

Joad stopped at the step, a twelve-by-twelve timber. “Doorstep’s here,” he said. “But they’re gone—or Ma’s dead.” He pointed to the low gate across the front door. “If Ma was anywheres about, that gate’d be shut an’ hooked. That’s one thing she always done—seen that gate was shut.” His eyes were warm. “Ever since the pig got in over to Jacobs’ an’ et the baby. Milly Jacobs was jus’ out in the barn. She come in while the pig was still eatin’ it. Well, Milly Jacobs was in a family way, an’ she went ravin’. Never did get over it. Touched ever since. But Ma took a lesson from it. She never lef’ that pig gate open ’less she was in the house herself.

Granma said proudly, “A wicketer, cussin’er man never lived. He’s goin’ to hell on a poker, praise Gawd! Wants to drive the truck!” she said spitefully. “Well, he ain’t goin’ ta.”

“Well, I am, kinda. But I ain’t nowheres near the fella I was. Jus’ let me get out to California where I can pick me an orange when I want it. Or grapes. There’s a thing I ain’t never had enough of. Gonna get me a whole big bunch a grapes off a bush, or whatever, an’ I’m gonna squash ’em on my face an’ let ’em run offen my chin.”

The preacher said, “She looks tar’d.” “Women’s always tar’d,” said Tom. “That’s just the way women is, ’cept at meetin’ once an’ again.” “Yeah, but tar’der’n that. Real tar’d, like she’s sick-tar’d.”

The dog wandered, sniffing, past the truck, trotted to the puddle under the hose again and lapped at the muddy water. And then he moved away, nose down and ears hanging. He sniffed his way among the dusty weeds beside the road, to the edge of the pavement. He raised his head and looked across, and then started over. Rose of Sharon screamed shrilly. A big swift car whisked near, tires squealed. The dog dodged helplessly, and with a shriek, cut off in the middle, went under the wheels. The big car slowed for a moment and faces looked back, and then it gathered greater speed and disappeared. And the dog, a blot of blood and tangled, burst intestines, kicked slowly in the road.

And from this first “we” there grows a still more dangerous thing: “I have a little food” plus “I have none.” If from this problem the sum is “We have a little food,” the thing is on its way, the movement has direction. Only a little multiplication now, and this land, this tractor are ours. The two men squatting in a ditch, the little fire, the side-meat stewing in a single pot, the silent, stone-eyed women; behind, the children listening with their souls to words their minds do not understand. The night draws down. The baby has a cold. Here, take this blanket. It’s wool. It was my mother’s blanket—take it for the baby. This is the thing to bomb. This is the beginning—from “I” to “we.” If you who own the things people must have could understand this, you might preserve yourself. If you could separate causes from results, if you could know that Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin, were results, not causes, you might survive. But that you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezes you forever into “I,” and cuts you off forever from the “we.” The Western States are

Tom was silent for a moment, then, “I’m gonna take a fall outa you, Al. You jus’ scrabblin’ ass over tit, fear somebody gonna pin some blame on you. I know what’s a matter. Young fella, all full a piss an’ vinegar. Wanta be a hell of a guy all the time. But, goddamn it, Al, don’ keep ya guard up when nobody ain’t sparrin’ with ya. You gonna be all right.”

A boy stopped near another boy and studied a stone, picked it up, examined it closely, spat on it, and rubbed it clean and inspected it until he forced the other to demand, What you go there? And casually, Nothin’. Jus’ a rock. Well, what you lookin’ at it like that for? Thought I seen gold in it. How’d you know? Gold ain’t gold, it’s black in a rock. Sure, ever’body knows that. I bet it’s fool’s gold, an’ you figgered it was gold. That ain’t so, ’cause Pa, he’s foun’ lots a gold an’ he tol’ me how to look. How’d you like to pick up a big ol’ piece a gold? Sa-a-ay! I’d git the bigges’ old son-a-bitchin’ piece a candy you ever seen. I ain’t let to swear, but I do, anyways. Me too. Le’s go to the spring.

The boy in white went into the iron building where his helper labored over a book of bills. “Jesus, what a hard-looking outfit!” “Them Okies? They’re all hard-lookin’.” “Jesus, I’d hate to start out in a jalopy like that.” “Well, you and me got sense. Them goddamn Okies got no sense and no feeling. 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. They ain’t a hell of a lot better than gorillas.”

And the companies, the banks worked at their own doom and they did not know it. The fields were fruitful, and starving men moved on the roads. The granaries were full and the children of the poor grew up rachitic, and the pustules of pellagra swelled on their sides. The great companies did not know that the line between hunger and anger is a thin line. And money that might have gone to wages went for gas, for guns, for agents and spies, for blacklists, for drilling. On the highways the people moved like ants and searched for work, for food. And the anger began to ferment.

“Swedes up in Dakota—know what they do sometimes? Put pepper on the floor. Gits up the ladies’ skirts an’ makes ’em purty lively—lively as a filly in season. Swedes do that sometimes.”

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