Summary: Chapter 25
Spring is beautiful in California, but, like the migrants,
many small local farmers stand to be ruined by large landowners,
who monopolize the industry. Unable to compete with these magnates,
small farmers watch their crops wither and their debts rise. The
wine in the vineyards’ vats goes bad, and anger and resentment spread throughout
the land. The narrator comments, “In the souls of the people, the
grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for
the vintage.”
Summary: Chapter 26
After nearly a month in the government camp, the Joads
find their supplies running low and work scarce. Ma Joad convinces
the others that they must leave the camp the next day. They make
preparations and say good-bye to their friends. The truck has a
flat tire, and as they are fixing it, a man in a suit and heavy
jewelry pulls up in a roadster with news of employment: the Joads
can go to work picking peaches only thirty-five miles away. When
they arrive at the peach farm, they find cars backed up on the roads
leading to it, and angry mobs of people shouting from the roadside.
The family learns that they will be paid only five cents a box for
picking peaches; desperate for food, they take the job. At the end
of the day, even with everyone in the family working, they have
earned only one dollar. They must spend their entire day’s wages
on their meal that night, and afterward they remain hungry.
That evening, Al goes looking for girls, and Tom, curious
about the trouble on the roadside, goes to investigate. Guards turn
him away at the orchard gate, but Tom sneaks under the gate and
starts down the road. He comes upon a tent and discovers that one
of the men inside is Jim Casy. Jim tells Tom about his experience
in prison and reports that he now works to organize the migrant
farmers. He explains that the owner of the peach orchards cut wages
to two-and-a-half cents a box, so the men went on strike. Now the
owner has hired a new group of men in hopes of breaking the strike.
Casy predicts that by tomorrow, even the strike-breakers will be
making only two-and-a-half cents per box. Tom and Casy see flashlight
beams, and two policemen approach them, recognizing Casy as the
workers’ leader and referring to him as a communist. As Casy protests that
the men are only helping to starve children, one of them crushes his
skull with a pick handle. Tom flies into a rage and wields the pick handle
on Casy’s murderer, killing him before receiving a blow to his own
head. He manages to run away and makes it back to his family. In
the morning, when they discover his wounds and hear his story, Tom
offers to leave so as not to bring any trouble to them. Ma, however,
insists that he stay. They leave the peach farm and head off to find
work picking cotton. Tom hides in a culvert close to the plantation—his
crushed nose and bruised face would bring suspicion upon him—and
the family sneaks food to him.
Summary: Chapter 27
Signs appear everywhere advertising work in the cotton
fields. Wages are decent, but workers without cotton-picking sacks
are forced to buy them on credit. There are so many workers that
some are unable to do enough work even to pay for their sacks. Some
of the owners are crooked and rig the scales used to weigh the cotton. To
counter this practice, the migrants often load stones in their sacks.
Analysis: Chapters 25–27
In the short, expository chapters that intersperse the
story of the Joads, Steinbeck employs a range of prose styles and
tones. He ranges from overt symbolism (as with the turtle in Chapter 3), to heated sermonizing (as with his indictment of corrupt
businessmen in Chapter 7), to the didactic tone of a parable
(as with the story of Mae the waitress in Chapter 15). In this
part of the book, Steinbeck turns to the rough, native language
of the people to convey a day on a cotton farm (Chapter 27):
the effect is an intimate, lively, and moving portrayal of the daily
life of the migrants. In Chapter 25, the phrasing and word
choice evokes biblical language: simple and declarative, yet highly
stylized and symbolic. Steinbeck portrays the rotten state of the
economic system by describing the literal decay that results from
this system’s agricultural mismanagement. Depictions of the putrefying
crops symbolize the people’s darkening, festering anger. The rotting
vines and spoiled vintage in particular, both a source and an emblem
of the workers’ rage, become a central image and provide the novel with
its title.
The Joads’ dream of a golden life in California, like
the season’s wine, has gone sour. After a month in the government
camp with little work, the family’s resources are dangerously low.
The few days of charmed living have passed. Desperate and discouraged,
Ma announces that the family needs to move on; her seizure of authority rocks
the traditional family structure. Pa is upset that Ma has assumed
the task of decision-making, a responsibility that typically belongs
to the male head of the household. When he threatens to put her
back in her “proper place,” Ma responds by saying, “[Y]ou ain’t a-doin’
your job. . . . If you was, why, you could use your stick, an’ women
folks’d sniffle their nose and creep-mouse aroun’. ” The family
structure has undergone a revolution, in which the female figure,
traditionally powerless, has taken control, while the male figure,
traditionally in the leadership role, has retreated.
In this section, the stakes of the conflict established
in previous chapters are made clear: the contest between rich and
poor, between landowners and migrants, is one that will—and perhaps
must—be fought to the death. As the end of Chapter 25 states,
the people’s anger is ripening, “growing heavy for the vintage.”
In other words, their anger must soon be released in a burst of
violence. When that happens, lives will be lost. Casy’s death stands
as a sober reminder of the price that must be paid for equality.
