The Grapes of Wrath: Chapters 16-19

We got almost a kin bond.

Pa looked helplessly about the group. “She sassy,” he said. “I never seen her so sassy.” Ruthie giggled shrilly.

A great pile of junk; fenders and truck sides, wheels and axles; over the whole lot a spirit of decay, of mold and rust; twisted iron, half-gutted engines, a mass of derelicts.

In front of one tent a low fitful fire burned, and a woman watched a kettle that cooked early breakfast.

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.

And with the laws, the punishments—and there were only two—a quick and murderous fight or ostracism; and ostracism was the worst.

Ruthie said, with soft vehemence, “California. This here’s California an’ we’re right in it!”

Her eyes were bleared and indefinite, and the skin sagged to her jowls and hung down in little flaps.

From some little distance there came the sound of the beginning meeting, a sing-song chant of exhortation.

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

Tom looked down the line of tents and he saw Ruthie and Winfield standing in front of a tent in decorous conversation with someone inside.

And the imported serfs were beaten and frightened and starved until some went home again, and some grew fierce and were killed or driven from the country.

A man may stand to use a scythe, a plow, a 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.

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.

And such a man drove along the roads and knew temptation at every field, and knew the lust to take these fields and make them grow strength for his children and a little comfort for his wife. The temptation was before him always. The fields goaded him, and the company ditches with good water flowing were a goad to him.