Summary: Chapter 10
Tom and Ma Joad discuss California. Ma worries about what
they will find there but trusts that the handbill she read that
advertised work was accurate and that California will be a wonderful
place. Grampa agrees, boasting that when he arrives there he will
fill his mouth with grapes and let the juices run down his chin.
Pa Joad has gone to town to sell off some of the family’s possessions.
Now he returns discouraged, having earned a mere eighteen dollars.
The Joads hold a council during which it is decided that Casy may
travel with them to California; then they set about packing to leave.
Casy helps Ma Joad salt the meat. Despite her protests that salting
is women’s work, Casy convinces her that the amount of work facing them
renders such preoccupations invalid. Rose of Sharon and Connie arrive,
and the family piles onto the truck. When the time comes to leave,
Muley Graves bids the family good-bye, but Grampa suddenly wants
to stay. He claims that he aims to live off the land like Muley
and continues to protest loudly until the Joads lace his coffee with
sleeping medicine. Once the old man is asleep, the family loads him
onto the truck and begins the long journey west.
Summary: Chapter 11
When the farmers leave their land, the land becomes vacant.
The narrator explains that even though men continue to work the
land, these men have no real connection to their work. Possessed
of little knowledge or skill, these corporate farm workers come
to the farm during the day, drive a tractor over it, and leave to
go home. Such a separation between work and life causes men to lose
wonder for their work and for the land. The farmer’s “deep understanding”
of the land and his relationship to it cease to be. The empty farmhouses are
quickly invaded by animals and begin to crumble in the dust and the
wind.
Summary: Chapter 12
Long lines of cars creep down Highway 66,
full of tenant farmers making their way to California. The narrator
again assumes the voices of typical farmers, expressing their worries
about their vehicles and the dangers of the journey. When the farmers
stop to buy parts for their cars, salesmen try to cheat them. The
farmers struggle to make it from service station to service station,
fleeing from the desolation they have left behind. They are met
with hostility and suspicion. People inquire about their journey,
claiming that the country is not large enough to support everybody’s
needs and suggesting that they go back to where they came from.
Still, one finds rare instances of hope and beauty, such as the
stranded family that possesses only a trailer—no motor to pull it—and
waits by the side of the road for lifts. They make it to California
“in two jumps,” proving that “strange things happen . . . some bitterly
cruel and some so beautiful that faith is refired forever.”
Analysis: Chapters 10–12
In these chapters, Steinbeck continues to develop his
picture of the farmers’ world, with flashes of the desolate farms
they flee, as well as of the many adverse circumstances that await
them. Steinbeck suggests that the hardships the families face stem
from more than harsh weather conditions or simple misfortune. Human
beings, acting with calculated greed, are responsible for much of
their sorrow. Such selfishness separates people from one another,
disabling the kind of unity and brotherhood that Casy deems holy.
It creates an ugly animosity that pits man against man, as is clear
in Chapter 12, when a gas station attendant suggests that California
is becoming overcrowded with migrants. When a farmer notes that surely
California is a large enough state to support everyone, the attendant
cynically replies, “There ain’t room enough for you an’ me, for
your kind an’ my kind, for rich and poor together all in one country.”
This factionalism not only divides men from their brethren,
it also divides men from the land. Steinbeck identifies greed and
covetousness as the central cause of the tenant farmers’ dislocation from
the ground they have always known. The corporate farmers who replace
the old families possess the same acquisitive mind-set as their
employers. Interested only in getting their work done quickly and
leaving with a paycheck, they treat the land with hostility, as
an affliction rather than a home, and put heavy machinery between themselves
and the fields.
Both Muley Graves and Grampa Joad represent the human reluctance
to be separated from one’s land. Both men locate their roots in
the Oklahoma soil and both are willing to abandon their families
in order to maintain this connection. Neither Muley nor Grampa Joad
can imagine who he would be beyond the boundaries that, until now,
have shaped and defined him. In their scheme to prevent Grampa from
staying, the Joads engage in blatant dishonesty, yet their intentions
are good. For the Joads mean to sever one kind of connection in
favor of another, abandoning the land to keep the family together.
They believe in the ability of human connections to sustain their
grandfather’s life and spirit.
As the Joads depart, their interactions speak further
to their common belief in the importance of family and the family
structure. Men lead—even if, as in Grampa’s case, their guidance
is merely ceremonial—whereas women follow. It is important to note
this structure now, for once the family is on the road, this traditional
power dynamic shifts. This process is prefigured in Casy’s insistence
that he help Ma Joad salt the meat. Faced with dauntingly difficult
work, the group can no longer cling to gender-based divisions of
labor.
Thus, while economic adversity may frequently drive divisions between
people, it can also serve to erase divisions, to emphasize everyone’s
common humanity. Steinbeck’s text insists that the hardships of
the road, while often creating ugliness, can also yield unexpected
beauty. A single instance of charity or kindness emerges as an oasis
of moral nobility, both testifying to and renewing the strength of
the human spirit. Although the Joads declare the family’s goal to be
their arrival in California, it is these rare and serendipitous
places along the road—in which hope is confirmed despite life’s
atrocities—that constitute the Joads’ true destination.
