Summary: Chapter 1
The cornfields of Oklahoma shrivel and fade in a long
summer drought. Thick clouds of dust fill the skies, and the farmers
tie handkerchiefs over their noses and mouths. At night, the dust
blocks out the stars and creeps in through cracks in the farmhouses.
During the day the farmers have nothing to do but stare dazedly
at their dying crops, wondering how their families will survive.
Their wives and children watch them in turn, fearful that the disaster
will break the men and leave the families destitute. They know that
no misfortune will be too great to bear as long as their men remain
“whole.”
Summary: Chapter 2
Into this desolate country enters Tom Joad, newly released
from the McAlester State Penitentiary, where he served four years
on a manslaughter conviction. Dressed in a cheap new suit, Tom hitches
a ride with a trucker he meets at a roadside restaurant. The trucker’s vehicle
carries a “No Riders” sign, but Tom asks the trucker to be a “good
guy” even if “some rich bastard makes him carry a sticker.” As they
travel down the road, the driver asks Tom about himself, and Tom
explains that he is returning to his father’s farm. The driver is
surprised that the Joads have not been driven off their property
by a “cat,” a large tractor sent by landowners and bankers to force poor
farmers off the land. The driver reports that much has changed during
Tom’s absence: great numbers of families have been “tractored out”
of their small farms. The driver fears that Tom has taken offense
at his questions and assures him that he’s not a man to stick his
nose in other folks’ business. The loneliness of life on the road,
he confides in Tom, can wear a man down. Tom senses the man looking him
over, noticing his clothes, and admits that he has just been released
from prison. The driver assures Tom that such news does not bother
him. Tom laughs, telling the driver that he now has a story to tell
“in every joint from here to Texola.” The truck comes to a stop
at the road leading to the Joads’ farm, and Tom gets out.
Summary: Chapter 3
In the summer heat, a turtle plods across the baking highway.
A woman careens her car aside to avoid hitting the turtle, but a
young man veers his truck straight at the turtle, trying to run
it over. He nicks the edge of the turtle’s shell, flipping it off
the highway and onto its back. Legs jerking in the air, the turtle
struggles to flip itself back over. Eventually it succeeds and continues
trudging on its way.
Analysis: Chapters 1–3
The Grapes of Wrath derives its epic
scope from the way that Steinbeck uses the story of the Joad family
to portray the plight of thousands of Dust Bowl farmers. The structure
of the novel reflects this dual commitment: Steinbeck tracks the
Joad family with long narrative chapters but alternates these sections
with short, lyrical vignettes, capturing the westward movement of
migrant farmers in the 1930s as they flee
drought and industry.
This structure enables Steinbeck to use many different
writing styles. The short (usually odd-numbered) chapters use highly
stylized, poetic language to explore the social, economic, and historical factors
that forced the great migration. Steinbeck’s first description of
the land is almost biblical in its simplicity, grandeur, and repetition:
“The surface of the earth crusted, a thin hard crust, and as the sky
became pale, so the earth became pale, pink in the red country and
white in the gray country.” The chapters devoted to the Joads’ story
are noteworthy for their remarkably realistic evocation of life and
language among Oklahoma sharecroppers. Here Steinbeck displays his
talent for rich, naturalistic narration. (Naturalism is a school
of writing favoring realistic representations of human life and
natural, as opposed to supernatural or spiritual, explanations for
social phenomena.) Expertly rendered details place the reader squarely
and immediately in the book’s setting, quickly drawing us in after
an interlude of more distanced poetics. Steinbeck also skillfully
captures the colorful, rough dialogue of his folk heroes—“You had
that big nose goin’ over me like a sheep in a vegetable patch,” Tom
says to the truck driver in Chapter 2—thus bringing them to life.
By employing a wide range of styles, Steinbeck achieves what he called
a “symphony in composition, in movement, in tone and scope.”
The opening of the novel also establishes several of the
novel’s dominant themes. Steinbeck dedicates the first and third
chapters, respectively, to a historical and symbolic description
of the Dust Bowl tragedy. While Chapter 1 paints an impressionistic
picture of the Oklahoma farms as they wither and die, Chapter 3 presents a symbolic depiction of the farmers’ plights in the turtle
that struggles to cross the road. Both chapters share a particularly
dark vision of the world. As the relentless weather of Chapter 1 and the mean-spirited driver of Chapter 3 represent, the universe
is full of obstacles that fill life with hardship and danger. Like
the turtle that trudges across the road, the Joad family will be
called upon, time and again, to fight the malicious forces—drought,
industry, human jealousy and fear—that seek to overturn it.
