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If you done somepin you was ashamed of, you might think about that. But, hell, if I seen Herb Turnbull comin’ for me with a knife right now, I’d squash him down with a shovel again.
In Chapter 6, Tom explains to Jim Casy and Muley Graves how he passed the time in prison. The incident that lands Tom in prison serves as a model for the way wrath works in the novel. Everyone, even the judge, agrees that Tom’s actions are nothing to be ashamed of because he was provoked out of self-preservation. Because the novel treats debasing and dehumanizing treatment as similarly threatening to one’s life and dignity, wrath and anger are correspondingly inevitable and proper responses.
They’re a-tryin’ to make us cringe an’ crawl like a whipped bitch. They tryin’ to break us. Why, Jesus Christ, Ma, they comes a time when the on’y way a fella can keep his decency is by takin’ a sock at a cop. They’re workin’ on our decency.
Tom’s outrage here comes from Chapter 20, after the police arrest Jim Casy in his stead. Here, Tom notes that the cop’s disproportionate anger and quickness to arrest those in the Hooverville camp is degrading and dehumanizing. Passively allowing that treatment from anyone, even a cop, means sacrificing a piece of self-respect. Hitting the cop here is likened to a statement of one’s own humanity, a refusal to accept ill-treatment.
In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
This quotation from Chapter 25, one of the intercalary chapters, explains the significance of the novel’s title and the role of wrath in the novel. According to the narrator, inhumane and violent treatment against the migrant laborers isn’t making them weaker or more passive. Instead, the treatment metaphorically plants the seeds of wrath in them, sowing a discontent and need to fight to assert their humanity and dignity. By describing wrath as a grape, something planted and cultivated, Steinbeck emphasizes that wrath is not something spontaneous or mindless, but rather the natural consequence of treating people with sustained cruelty.
And the women sighed with relief, for they knew it was all right—the break had not come; and the break would never come as long as fear could turn to wrath.
In Chapter 29, the last intercalary chapter, the narrator makes a final, distinguishing argument for the dignity of wrath. Wrath is different from a breakdown because it is a justified response to ill-treatment. The implication is that wrath moves people to common action and an assertion of self-respect that is akin to self-preservation. Breaking down, on the other hand, whether in sorrow or indiscriminate meanness, means taking the ill-treatment to heart and accepting it, enacting a tacit surrender.
