A Depressing Pregnancy

So when times are rough, go to California.
If times are really rough, get pregnant, then go to California.
That's right! When you can barely afford to feed your own face, (Rose of Sharon) might as well have make another hungry child, as if there are not enough starving people during this time. Who knows, maybe good will come of the kid. Maybe it will be the next Rockefeller and bring the whole family out of poverty. I doubt it, but who knows?

That poor dog...

When the Joad's stop at a gas station their dog runs into the highways and is instantly hit by a car, however, no one seems to really care. Do you guys think people back in those days didn't value their animals as much as we did? Or do you think they weren't really attached to their dog? And even so, why didn't the sight of the dog getting killed not make the Joad's sad? Is it perhaps that people during that time were desensitized by death?

Trouble With Buttons

ok, i'm sure there was some sort of significance attached to grampa's difficulty buttoning up his pants, shirt, and long underwear, but i have no idea what it was. and then the part about him scratching himself...didn't really feel like i needed to know that. can anyone help me out here?

No Law in Oklahoma

When Muley came into the story and the three men stayed at the old Joad house the police came to the house to check out the fire and see if anybody was at the house. Muley talked about shooting the cop, Willy, and said that he had done it before. During the Dustbowl era in the United States did this type of lawlessness actually occur or was Steinbeck just trying to add something to the story? The way Steinbeck described it sounded like the Old West instead of the United States in the mid 1930s.

What Up's With Gradpa?

When the Joads where first taking about going to California Grandpa was excited about going and wanted to squirt grapes all down his face. But when it was time to leave he did not want to leave and had to be druged to get on the truck. Later down the road Grandpa dies and the Joads say it is because he was taken away from his land and was heartbroken. If Grandpa was so upset about leaving his land that it caused him to die why did he want to leave it in the beginning? This did not make sense and if there was any symbolic meaning in his death I think this made the meaning unclear.

Realization

Okay..... this may be a totally out-there comparison, but around page 174 in chapter 13, the Joads are talking to the Gasoline guy.... before it had described him as having " brown corduroy pants, suspenders, a polo shirt, and a cardboard sun helmet". Then on page 174 it says "And he say for the first time the fat man's cheap washed pants and his cheap polo shirt and his paper hat". While before the man had seemed well dressed, he was really shabby and poor. Will this happen with their final destination? California seems like it will be new and nice and a bright, shiny new future, but in reality will it be just be as shabby and poor as their previous home?

so im finally caught up and im interested to see how this whole journey to california thing ends up...of course poor grandpa had to kick the bucket..

Car Lot???

Ok I realize this was a little ways back in the book, but what was with the car sale thing? Was it realy necessary? What in the world did it relate to anyway?

WHY!!! oh goodness WHY?!?!

What is the purpose of grandpas dying? I don't understand why he had to die?

The Odd Chpters

In chapters such as 7, 9, and 12 Steinbeck uses third person to tell about events such as the car dealership, HWY 66, and the farmers selling their possessions. These chapters are obviously relevant to the story of the Joads summing up past chapters and foreshadowing upcoming chapters. But are the people that he discussed in these chapters the Joads, even though he does not say their name, or are they nameless to represent that a lot of people during the era were in the same situation that the Joads were in? And do these chapters seem a little repetitive since they are just a review of what he talked about in past chapters and just tell the reader what is going to happen to the Joads in the upcoming chapters? Is he using these chapters to make the book longer or is he trying to accomplish something with these odd chapters?

Good or Bad Decision??

So Tom is breaking parole to go with his family. Besides the obvious reasons of getting put back in jail if he gets caught, are there any other negative effects to his decision?? Is there a positive side??

Muley

Does anyone else think that Muley's purpose has run out?

The Family "Reunion"

I really liked the family reuniting. It really hit close to home for me because I am close to my family. Reading about all the different people seeing Joad for the first time in a long time really took me down memory lane. Joad also parallels to someone in my family. This story is also starting to make some sense now that I can truly relate the family and Joad back to my own family and relatives.

Alive and Dead

Was anyone else particularly impressed with Steibeck's descriptions of alive and dead? How the farms are dead now that they are empty, about the man working the fields that are not his land, and how the grandpa was dead as soon as he left the land.

"There is a warmth of life in the barn, and the heat and the smell of life. But when the motor of a tractor stops, it is as dead as the ore it came from. The heat goes out of it like the living heat that leaves a corpse" (157).

"But the machine man, driving a dead tractor on land he does not know and love, understands only chemistry... When the corrugated iron doors are shut, he goes home, and his home is not the land" (158).

"He died the minute you took 'im off the place... He was breathin'... but he was dead. He was that place, an' he knowed it" (199).

Is it foreshadowing of more death to come or simply description in relation of the death of the grandpa?

Car Salesman

Does the car salesman have anything to do with the actual story line. I am confused. Please help.