The Grapes of Wrath: Chapter 18

Chapter eighteen is a very important chapter for the Joad family. The family line-up is going to get a little bit different.

Granma is still sick, but the Joad family still can not figure out why she is, they just keep saying that she’s too tired and hot, but it might have something to do with her husband dying a couple chapters back, but they have seem to forgotten already.

The family finally makes it into California, and... nothing has really changed, not any different from the rest of the trip. Plus they still have the desert to cross. They decide to wait until it is night to cross, so they don’t risk dying, and they pull over and start camping. The men go off skinny dipping in the Colorado River, and then a father and son join them. They reveal that they are from California and they are heading back home to starve with their other friends and family, just like the guy at the rest stop. He tells of how bad it is there, and how miserable people are. How the Californians hate all of the migrant workers and call them names like “Okies,” which doesn’t sound that bad, but the way that they say it makes it sound like they are terrible people (Steinbeck 205). He tells stories about how there is a ton of unfarmed land just sitting there, and the owners refuse to let the farmers cultivate it. Obviously, these stories discourage the family, but John says “We’re a-goin’ there, aint’t we? None of this here talk gonna keep us from goin’ there. When we get there, we’ll get there. When we get a job we’ll work, an’ when we don’t get a job we’ll set on our tail. This here talk ain’t gonna do no good no way” (Steinbeck 207).

Noah tells Tom that he doesn’t want to go on, that he just wants to live by the river, and he just walks off into the forest, but when Tom tells his mom and dad, they don’t react that severely, Ma Joad just says “the family’s fallin’ apart” (Steinbeck 216). Ma Joad also almost assaults a police officer with a frying pan when he disrespects her, called her an Okie, and threatened to arrest them if they weren’t gone by tomorrow. Not a very nice guy.

Then, they reach California and Ma reveals that Granma was dead. Everybody is surprised to hear this, mostly because Ma Joad was riding with Granma the whole time, and she didn’t say anything. She just wanted to make sure they got across the desert in one piece.

Steinbeck, John, and Robert J. DeMott. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Penguin, 2006. Print.