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

On the way to meet his folks, Tom tells Casy a story about his Uncle John. One day, after four months of marriage, John's young wife complained of stomach cramps. She asked John to call the doctor. He told her that all she needed was some painkiller. The next day, though, the poor girl died of a burst appendix. Is it any wonder, then, that, as Tom says, his uncle is lonely and mean? Later in the book, John goes on drinking sprees. Knowing John's past, you can understand his occasional binges.

Just past sunup Tom and Casy reach John's place. You might think that Tom's family would celebrate the return of the second oldest son. But they don't. The reception, while warm, is not grand. Perhaps the family plight is just too serious at the moment to think of much else. The Joads have been uprooted. They plan to load all their belongings onto an old Hudson and to join the westward migration. They have little money and no real prospects for jobs. Who would not be overcome with worry in such circumstances?

Tom sees his relations one by one. Steinbeck might have shown Tom marching into the thick of the Joads, while, say, the family ate breakfast. Instead, Steinbeck describes Tom's return in another way. Each person greets Tom separately, and we get a glimpse of each member of the family. Let's see what they disclose about Tom's personality.

Pa, whom Tom meets first, is incredulous that Tom is back, but just for an instant. He sees in Tom's return a chance to play a little trick on Ma: he will announce the arrival of a stranger, just to see the look on her face when he recognizes her son.

Ma's reunion with Tom shows a special relationship between mother and son. Tom bites his lip so hard it bleeds. Ma's first words are "Thank God. Oh, thank God." She had been fretting about never seeing Tom again. Ma's response is typical, for she is the family worrier. She carries the family's burdens on her shoulders. She is the healer and the judge. No wonder that Steinbeck calls her the "citadel of the family."

We find that Grampa is a "cantankerous, complaining, mischievous" old man who likes to tell dirty stories. Grampa admires Tom and boasts that no prison is secure enough to hold a Joad. He drinks too much and rarely stops talking or cackling. He bickers constantly with Granma. In spite of his eccentric behavior, though, Grampa is still considered the leader of the Joads. Age, it seems, holds a revered place in their society.

Granma, too, is something of a hellion: crude, loud-mouthed, "lecherous," and "savage," hardly the sweet little old grandmother type. Hearing that Tom has returned, she comes out shrieking, "Pu-raise Gawd fur vittory."

But Granma gets a bigger thrill from seeing Casy. Now there can be prayer meetings and proper grace at mealtime. "I ain't a preacher no more," protests Casy. Granma insists anyway that Casy say grace before breakfast. In Granma's eyes, once a preacher, always a preacher.

Casy obliges. He seems to be living up to his vow to love "the people." Casy's prayer is a personal story about how, like Jesus, he went alone into the wilderness and discovered a new religion for himself and the people. It sounds more like a confession, but that doesn't matter to Granma. For her, it's not the content but the ritual that counts. Do you recall that Casy was driven from religion in the first place by that very point of view?

Tom sees his brother Noah. They exchange cool greetings. Noah's behavior is hard to figure out. He seems remote from the family. Later, we find out why Noah is an outsider: he had had a difficult birth, which evidently damaged his brain.

Rose of Sharon, Tom learns, has married and is pregnant. Tom sees her later that day and notices how in four years she has blossomed from a child to a woman. Tom also meets her husband, Connie, a 19-year-old who acts bewildered by the physical changes in his young wife. Both Rose of Sharon and Connie are preoccupied with the coming baby. Their blushes and giggles when they greet Tom suggest just how young they really are.

Twelve-year-old Ruthie and ten-year-old Winfield greet their brother as they would a stranger. They hardly remember him. Four years is a long time in the life of a child.

Al Joad, Tom's other brother, has grown up, too. His main occupation, we discover, is chasing girls. When Tom arrives, Al hasn't yet returned from the previous night's "smart-alecking." We're told that Al has impressed many girls with the information that his brother killed a man in a fight. Evidently, Al is proud of Tom.

For four years Al has filled in for Tom as the family's second son after Noah. How would you expect a person in Al's shoes to react when his older brother returns? If he is disappointed, he doesn't show it. The only thing that bothers him is that Tom hadn't broken out of prison. By waiting until he was paroled, Tom loses face in Al's eyes, and Al loses something to brag about to the girls.

^^^^^^^^^^THE GRAPES OF WRATH: CHAPTER 9

What would it be like to leave your home forever and be allowed to take with you only one full suitcase? What would you choose? What could you do without?

That's the crux of the problem for farm families being evicted from their homes. They have only a small truck or a car to carry all their belongings. What can they do with the things they can't take along? They could leave them behind, of course, or better still they could sell them. But one man's favorite workhorse is another's worthless old nag. So what do you do? You sell the horse for a fraction of what it is worth. The same is true for the beds, the dressers, the bathtub, and the baby's crib. Nobody wants that old furniture, anyway. So what do you do? You burn it in a big bonfire. Wouldn't it hurt you terribly to see the things you love go up in smoke?

NOTE: Steinbeck's interchapter prepares us for what the Joads will be doing in the next chapter. We'll see their pain as they cast away everything that won't fit in their truck.

^^^^^^^^^^THE GRAPES OF WRATH: CHAPTER 10

If you're a sensitive person and about to leave the country of your birth forever, how might you feel? A bit sad, perhaps?

Most people would also be a little fearful of what the future might bring. Your uncertainty would be still stronger if you were about to travel 2000 miles because someone showed you a handbill on yellow paper saying that workers were needed to pick peaches, oranges, and grapes in California. On the other hand, you might also look forward to a new life in a better place.

That's Ma's mixed state of mind when the chapter opens. She tells Tom her fears. As a good son, what might Tom do? He could try to reassure her, tell her not to worry. But Tom is too honest for that. He says that "a fella from California" has told him that "they's too many folks lookin' for work right there now. An' he says the folks that pick the fruit live in dirty ol' camps an' don't hardly get enough to eat. He says wages is low an' hard to get any."

If Tom's information is correct, no one with a grain of sense would want to go to California. But since there's no place else for the Joads, Ma replies, "Oh, that ain't so." She denies it. What else can she do at this point? She also takes heart from Tom's advice to live one day at a time, a lesson he taught himself in prison.

Because Ma must prepare for the journey, she doesn't have enough time to fret, anyway. We know, however, that despite the optimistic face she shows to her family, Ma is worried.

To add to her worries, Pa, Uncle John, and Al return from town with just $18 to show for the sale of the Joads' horse, wagon, farm implements, and furniture. The three men are upset and angry. They sold too cheaply.