John Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath" Chapters 17-20

The exhortation stopped, and only the feral howling came from the tent, and with it a thudding sound on the earth.

He kicked the deputy in the neck and then stood back as the heavy man crumpled into unconsciousness.

He wore boots and khaki pants and a khaki shirt with epaulets.

A sheaf of papers was held in his shirt pocket by a little fence of fountain pens and yellow pencils; and from his hip pocket protruded a notebook with metal covers.

Every little means, every violence, every raid on a Hooverville, every deputy swaggering through a ragged camp put off the day a little and cemented the inevitability of the day.

And the owls coasted overhead, and the coyotes gabbled in the distance, and into the camp skunks walked, looking for bits of food—waddling, arrogant skunks, afraid of nothing.

They're a-tryin' to make us cringe an' crawl like a whipped bitch.

A certain physical pattern is needed for the building of a world—water, a river bank, a stream, a spring, or even a faucet unguarded.

Her face was wizened and dull, deep gray pouches under blank eyes, and a mouth slack and loose.

Every night a world created, complete with furniture—friends made and enemies established; a world complete with braggarts and with cowards, with quiet men, with humble men, with kindly men.

She handed them the bucket and they trudged off toward the river.

Ruthie and Winfield stood inside the circle, comporting themselves with proper frigidity and dignity.

And whereas the wants of the Californians were nebulous and undefined, the wants of the Okies were beside the roads, lying there to be seen and coveted: the good fields with water to be dug for, the good green fields, earth to crumble experimentally in the hand, grass to smell, oaten stalks to chew until the sharp sweetness was in the throat.

In the long hot light, they were silent in the cars moving slowly westward; but at night they integrated with any group they found.

The man put up his own tent as near to water as he could get; or if he had no tent, he went to the city dump and brought back cartons and built a house of corrugated paper.

Quote: In Lawrenceville a deputy sheriff evicted a squatter, and the squatter resisted, making it necessary for the officer to use force.

All over the State, jabbering in the Hoovervilles.

And the words parched in her throat.

The first house was nondescript.

Tom swerved into a side dirt road, ran a hundred yards, and turned off his lights and motor.

He slipped his clothes on his wet body and winced under the heat of the cloth.

And because they were lonely and perplexed, because they had all come from a place of sadness and worry and defeat, and because they were all going to a new mysterious place, they huddled together; they talked together; they shared their lives, their food, and the things they hoped for in the new country.

A Model T Ford sedan and a two-wheel trailer were parked beside the shack, and about the camp there hung a slovenly despair.

The great owners formed associations for protection and they met to discuss ways to intimidate, to kill, to gas.

The proprietor, a little gray man with an unkempt mustache and watery eyes, leaned on the counter reading a newspaper.

Little droplets of blood began to ooze from the wound.

And whereas the wants of the Californians were nebulous and undefined, the wants of the Okies were beside the roads, lying there to be seen and coveted: the good fields with water to be dug for, the good green fields, earth to crumble experimentally in the hand, grass to smell, oaten stalks to chew until the sharp sweetness was in the throat.

"He's talkin' red, agitating trouble."

On a Sam Browne belt a pistol holster hung, and a big silver star was pinned to his shirt at the left breast.

While the sun was up, it was a beating, flailing heat, but now the heat came from below, from the earth itself, and the heat was thick and muffling.

She whipped the air for a moment to drive a buzzing blow fly on, and the big shining fly circled the tent twice and zoomed out into the blinding sunlight.

A whining, babbling voice came from under the canvas.

In the daylight they scuttled like bugs to the westward; and as the dark caught them, they clustered like bugs near to shelter and to water.

He felt his neck gingerly.

She giggled.

Biled nettles an' fried dough!

An' you'll pass lan' flat an' fine with water thirty feet down, and that lan's layin' fallow.

The lights of the truck came on, and they illuminated a little blur of highway ahead, and a strip of desert on either side of the road.

They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless— restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do—to lift, to push, to pull, to pick, to cut—anything, any burden to bear, for food.

The man took his whitening, puckering hands out of the water and spread them, and he tightened his lower lip and bent his head down to one shoulder.

He wailed the song, "I'm Leaving Old Texas," that eerie song that was sung before the Spaniards came, only the words were Indian then.

Two cars loaded with disconsolate men drove down into the camp.

THE CARS OF THE migrant people crawled out of the side roads onto the great cross-country highway, and they took the migrant way to the West.

The great owners ignored the three cries of history.

An old, old man with a bent back came like a badger out of a tent and snooped near, sniffing the air as he came.

Tom picked up his automatic, pulled out the magazine and threw it into the brush, and he ejected the live shell from the chamber.

The woman leaned down over Granma's face, and she seemed almost to sniff.

She blurted fiercely, "Granma died right on top a the truck."

Al bristled.

In the long hot light, they were silent in the cars moving slowly westward; but at night they integrated with any group they found.

"So we take what we can get, huh, or we starve; an' if we yelp we starve."

Tom said, "They'll be somebody else foun' dead right 'longside of this here vagrant."

And the families learned, although no one told them, what rights are monstrous and must be destroyed: the right to intrude upon privacy, the right to be noisy while the camp slept, the right of seduction or rape, the right of adultery and theft and murder.

He waggled his toes slowly and, releasing his knees, pushed out his foot so he could see it.

And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away.

And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away.

The tractors which throw men out of work, the belt lines which carry loads, the machines which produce, all were increased; and more and more families scampered on the highways, looking for crumbs from the great holdings, lusting after the land beside the roads.

"Well, I'm contracting the land."

And Rose of Sharon said softly to Connie, "She was a-dyin' right when we—" "How'd we know?" he reassured her.

The sun drained the dry rocky country, and ahead were jagged broken peaks, the western wall of Arizona.

And some of the farms grew so large that one man could not even conceive of them any more, so large that it took batteries of bookkeepers to keep track of interest and gain and loss; chemists to test the soil, to replenish; straw bosses to see that the stooping men were moving along the rows as swiftly as the material of their bodies could stand.

A sheaf of papers was held in his shirt pocket by a little fence of fountain pens and yellow pencils; and from his hip pocket protruded a notebook with metal covers.

A stovepipe stuck out of the door flap, and the dirt in front of the tent had been swept and sprinkled.

A boy stopped near another boy and studied a stone, picked it up, examined it closely, spat on it, and rubbed it clean and inspected it until he forced the other to demand, What you got there?

And then Granma sighed deeply and her breathing grew steady and easy, and her closed eyelids ceased their flicking.

Tom said, "Well—" and then his voice took on a servile whine.

And the stars flowed down in a slow cascade over the western horizon.

But along the highway the cars of the migrant people crawled out like bugs, and the narrow concrete miles stretched ahead.
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THE JOAD FAMILY MOVED slowly westward, up into the mountains of New Mexico, past the pinnacles and pyramids of the upland.

The families learned what rights must be observed—the right of privacy in the tent; the right to keep the past black hidden in the heart; the right to talk and to listen; the right to refuse help or to accept, to offer help or to decline it; the right of son to court and daughter to be courted; the right of the hungry to be fed; the rights of the pregnant and the sick to transcend all other rights.

The fields goaded him, and the company ditches with good water flowing were a goad to him.

She stooped to the utensil box and picked out the iron skillet.

"Prune pickin', an' pears an' cannery work.

Rose of Sharon looked apprehensive.

And the words parched in her throat.

His eyes were glazed with worry, and a paleness showed through his dark skin.

And the laboring people hated Okies because a hungry man must work, and if he must work, if he has to work, the wage payer automatically gives him less for his work; and then no one can get more.

A man may stand to use a scythe, a plow, pitchfork; but he must crawl like a bug between the rows of lettuce, he must bend his back and pull his long bag between the cotton rows, he must go on his knees like a penitent across a cauliflower patch.

I'd come back with my jeans plumb fulla jack.

"Connie's thinkin' all a time," Ma chuckled.

Go in there midday when she was hotter'n a heifer, an' she'd be jus' as cool, as cool as you'd want.

They passed the summit in the dark and came slowly down in the late night, through the shattered stone debris of Oatman; and when the daylight came they saw the Colorado river below them.

He put his brace down on the running board and took up a chisel to scrape the crust from the block.

And at last Pa and Ma and Uncle John came out, and they were subdued and quiet.

Rose of Sharon's eyes were calculating.

He scoured the farms for work.

One man leaned in the window, and the warm smell of whisky preceded him.

The preacher and Uncle John and Ruthie were in a tangle on the load.

And the owls coasted overhead, and the coyotes gabbled in the distance, and into the camp skunks walked, looking for bits of food—waddling, arrogant skunks, afraid of nothing.

Uncle John dug with his thumbs into the watch pocket of his blue jeans and scooped out a folded dirty bill.

Tom took off his cloth cap, dirty now, and ruinous, the visor pointed as a bird's beak.

And while the Californians wanted many things, accumulation, social success, amusement, luxury, and a curious banking security, the new barbarians wanted only two things—land and food; and to them the two were one.

The sun sank low in the afternoon, but the heat did not seem to decrease.

The mattress lay on the ground, and the equipment was scattered about, as it had been unloaded in the morning.

They looked dully at the broken rock glaring under the sun, and across the river the terrible ramparts of Arizona.

When the bearded man was gone, the young man left his work and sauntered over.

"Tom, oh, Tom!" He sat up in the water and whistled through his teeth, a piercing whistle with a loop on the end.

And the truck rolled down the mountain into the great valley.


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ONCE CALIFORNIA BELONGED to Mexico and its land to Mexicans; and a horde of tattered feverish Americans poured in.

The wills thrust westward ahead of them, and fears that had once apprehended drought or flood now lingered with anything that might stop the westward crawling.

They looked dully at the broken rock glaring under the sun, and across the river the terrible ramparts of Arizona.

And then the tall trees began, and the cars spouted steam and labored up the slopes.

Secret gardening in the evenings, and water carried in a rusty can.

Many men can chord a guitar, but perhaps this man was a picker.

You're a contractor, an' you got a license.

And they crawled the jagged ramparts in the night, and their dim lights flickered on the pale stone walls of the road.

The men shucked off their pants, peeled their shirts, and waded out.

When supper was over and the dishes dipped and wiped, the dark had come, and then the men squatted down to talk.

He fitted his wrench to the enginehead bolts and turned them down evenly, one turn to each nut, around and around the series.

But at leas' we can starve to death with folks we know.

He jes' stepped outside the door, an' I bet he didn't tilt up that pint more'n four times till it was empty.

"Get in that car," he said, and he unhooked the strap that covered the butt of his automatic.

And these lusted so greatly to be settled that they set their faces into the West and drove toward it, forcing the clashing engines over the roads.

The sunlight glistened on hair tawny with dust.

And such was their hunger for land that they took the land—stole Sutter's land, Guerrero's land, took the grants and broke them up and growled and quarreled over them, those frantic hungry men; and they guarded with guns the land they had stolen.