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What is the significance of the title?
The title refers to how the cruel treatment of the migrant laborers will reap its own comeuppance. In other words, the laborers’ anger that so scares the landowners is something the landowners themselves created. The significance of this phrase also lies in the agricultural metaphor. Grapes must be carefully cultivated and tended. To cause someone to fight back against mistreatment—to grow grapes of wrath—one must actively create an unjust atmosphere.
Why is the Joad family going to California?
The Joad family, like most of their neighbors, are tenant farmers, meaning they do not technically own the land their house is on but instead pay rent through a portion of the crops they farm. Because of persistent drought creating dusty conditions and poor harvests for years, the landowners decide to devote the entirety of their land to farm cotton, evicting the tenant farmers in the process. With no prospects in Oklahoma and lured by advertisement handbills promising abundant agricultural work, the Joads, along with many others, decide to move to California in hopes of a better life.
Why is Jim Casy no longer a preacher?
Jim Casy stops being a preacher because he has a crisis of faith and no longer believes what he is supposed to be preaching. He doesn’t like the onus placed on a preacher to carry himself above and apart from his congregants because he doesn’t see himself as being any better or wiser than they are. He particularly objects to the church’s beliefs about sex and cursing, believing them to be natural, pleasurable parts of life. He furthermore believes that people have the right to decide their own moral code.
Why do the farm owners hate the government camp?
The government camp is hated by the farm owners because it treats the migrant laborers who live there with dignity and respect, offering them good living conditions, community, and safety. The owners know that if their workers understand that they deserve decency and respect, they will expect living wages, good treatment, and comfortable conditions, all things that drive up labor costs and cut into the owner’s profits. Furthermore, the ability for the government camp to run safely without excessive policing disproves their narrative that the migrant laborers are inherently dirty and violent, exposing their cruelty for what it is.
Why does Tom leave the family?
Tom ultimately decides to leave the family as part of a spiritual calling to continue Jim Casy’s work as a labor organizer. As a fugitive, Tom is in an ideal position to help with worker’s rights because of the way the landowners have also criminalized any attempts of the laborers to unionize. He already is a criminal in the eyes of the law and therefore has nothing to lose. His departure contrasts with that of Noah and Connie because Tom’s desire is not to abandon the family but extend his duty of care to the family of all workers.
