"Cliff Notes - Grapes of Wrath, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

What occurred on the Joads' place echoes what we read in Chapter 5. A representative of the land company evicted the Joads. Pa might have shot the man, but the wrong man would be dead. The poor fellow was just doing what he was told.

Then who is responsible?

Why, it's the bank that owns the land, of course.

Who's the bank?

It's not the man behind the desk in the local branch.

Who, then?

Maybe the directors, the stockholders and creditors.

Well, who controls them?

Money. Property. The need to show a profit.

Steinbeck, it seems, has given us a quick lesson in economics, the point being that the Joads and other tenant farmers can't fight back against an adversary that is not a person but an abstraction.

Nevertheless, Muley is engaged in a one-man resistance movement. He has refused to leave. Alone and bitter, he wanders the countryside. He eats small animals and reigns over a dead land. He calls himself a "graveyard ghos'," haunting the empty farms and sometimes playing cat-and-mouse with deputies on their inspection rounds. He thinks that he's slightly touched for living as he does, but the land is his, he's spilled blood on it and, by God, he's going to stay on it. His name fits his personality.

For dinner that evening, the three men share a jack rabbit that Muley has skinned. Muley acknowledges that although he's hungry he obviously must share his catch with Tom and Casy. "I ain't got no choice in the matter," he comments. Casy finds Muley's casual remark rich with implications. "Muley's got a-holt of somepin," says Casy, "an' it's too big for him, an' it's too big for me." All night Casy ponders Muley's big idea. By daybreak Casy has made a decision but, uncharacteristically, he keeps it to himself. We'll have to wait until later to find out what it is.

Conversation over the campfire draws out Tom's private thoughts. How different Tom suddenly seems. His abrasiveness vanishes. There is another side to his personality, after all.

He talks of his crime and punishment. He would kill Herb Turnbull again under the same circumstances. Four years in prison have not changed him. The time has been wasted. It did not feel like punishment. It ought to have had meaning, he says, but it didn't. The senselessness of his imprisonment bothers him. It has made him lose respect for the law and the government.

Tom's words don't seem like the reflections of a hardened criminal. Rather, he's a man with social consciousness. He's thought about society's rules, has found them full of holes, and now feels somewhat bitter.

To add to his resentment, that evening he and his companions hide from the deputy sheriff to avoid being charged with trespassing--on his own land, no less. Tom agrees with Muley that the "On'y kind a gover'ment we got... leans on us fellas." His attitude toward authority is important, keep it in mind when in later sections of the book he must decide whether or not to obey the law.

^^^^^^^^^^THE GRAPES OF WRATH: CHAPTER 7

When the impoverished sharecroppers are thrown off their farms, they have to go somewhere. Muley told us in the last chapter that most are headed west to California. But if they don't own a truck or a car, how will they get there? Furthermore, how will they transport their beds and dressers, their pots and kitchen stove?

In this interchapter we see slick, fast-talking used-car salesmen selling worn-out and withered junk-heaps to naive farmers who know a lot more about mules than about cars.

The farmer has scraped together $50 or $75 and calls on the nearest used-car dealer. He's a welcome sight to the salesman. The farmer is desperate, and the dealer knows it. To clinch a sale, the lot owners lie and cheat. They know that the farmer will be hundreds of miles away before he discovers the leaky radiator or cracked engine block. Although the buyers don't stand a chance in the used-car lot, they have to take it. What other choice do they have?

Shifty used-car salesmen won't be the only people to take advantage of the dispossessed farmers in The Grapes of Wrath, but they are among the first.

^^^^^^^^^^THE GRAPES OF WRATH: CHAPTER 8

Picking up the narrative again, Steinbeck takes us to Uncle John's, where we finally get to meet the Joads in person, all three generations of them.

Grampa and Granma are the oldest. Then come Pa and Ma and Uncle John. The next generation includes Tom and his brothers and sisters: Al, Noah, Rose of Sharon (and her husband, Connie Rivers), Ruthie, and Winfield.

Casy accompanies Tom on the road. He hopes to travel along with the Joads. Can there be any doubt that they will accept him? Although he's another mouth to feed, he's also an able-bodied man and can probably earn his keep. Moreover, the Joads wouldn't turn away their former preacher.