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

Al Joad finds a girl who's even closer than next door. She's Aggie Wainwright, who lives with her family at the other end of the boxcar. Al and Aggie fall for each other quickly. Mrs. Wainwright, worried that Al will soon go off leaving Aggie pregnant, pleads with Ma Joad to keep a tight rein on Al. Al's wanderlust never becomes an issue, though, because Al and Aggie announce their intention to marry. If the Joads leave when the cotton's finished, they'll go without Al.

Good fortune for the Joads, as we've seen before, lives a short life. One day, Ruthie gets embroiled in an argument over a box of Cracker Jack with some other children. She threatens to get her big brother, who has killed two men and is now in hiding, to beat them up.

To some, Ruthie's threat may sound like a child's bragging, not to be taken seriously. But someone else might start to poke around, looking for signs of a killer-in-hiding. There's no doubt now that Tom must leave.

Ma goes to Tom in the willows. Isn't there tragic irony in the situation? Ma, whose primary aim in life has been to keep the Joads together, delivers the word to the son she loves most that he must go his own way.

Since we have noticed that Tom has become more and more like Casy throughout the book, his reaction to Ma's news can't be a total surprise. Like Casy, Tom has now spent time alone in the wilderness. He's thought about Casy's ramblings, especially how "a fella ain't no good alone." He's ready to take up the cause that Casy died for, to walk in Casy's shoes.

As he says to Ma, "I'll be all aroun' in the dark, I'll be ever'where--wherever you look. Wherever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there.... I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad an'--I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's ready. An' when our folks eat the stuff they raise an' live in the houses they build--why I'll be there. See?" Although he admits to sounding much like Casy, Tom is too strong an individual to be a carbon copy of his mentor. We can be sure that Tom will carry on his fight for the people in his own way.

If you've puzzled over Casy's belief that no one has a soul of his own, but that everybody's got a piece of a great big soul, you're not alone. Tom has worked at it, too. And finally, he's come up with a sensible explanation: Casy went into the wilderness to find himself. What he found instead was an understanding that he could not isolate himself from others if his life were to have meaning. In other words, his piece of soul was no good unless it was with the rest and was whole. Casy's--and now Tom's--realization drove him to spend his life being with other people and crusading to bring them together.

Tom has thought deeply about Casy. Ma's response, that Casy "was a good man," suggests his philosophy is all beyond her. "I don' un'erstan'," Ma says. "I don' really know."

Perhaps she doesn't grasp ideas in Tom and Casy's terms, but she certainly does in her own.

In the end, Ma, Tom, and Casy are three of a kind. All give generously of themselves, but each in his or her own way. They embody the novel's main theme and carry Steinbeck's message to his readers.

Soon after Tom takes his leave, the weather changes. Serious storm clouds move in and a damp cold settles on the land. Trying to beat the rain because wet cotton can't be picked, a local cotton farmer puts out a call for as many workers as he can find. The whole family joins in, including Rose of Sharon. In her condition, she shouldn't be out in the fields, but she insists on going. By midday the job is done, but not before brisk winds and rain chill the workers to their bones.

Wet and cold, the Joads retreat to their boxcar and huddle around the wood stove. Rose of Sharon, weak to begin with, has developed a high fever. As the chapter ends, the rain beats steadily on the roof.

^^^^^^^^^^THE GRAPES OF WRATH: CHAPTER 29

We've come to the last interchapter in the novel. Remember the first one--the coming of the drought? In this chapter we see the gradual inundation of the land. Day after day the rains pour down. The fields turn into lakes. Mud is everywhere. Dampness seeps into your clothes, your tent, into your very pores. It seems as though you'll never be dry again.

As the water rises, migrants flee to the high ground. Some try to build dikes to hold back the water, but the current pushes too hard.

Cars, their wires shorted out, refuse to start. Shivering people with no means of escape crowd into barns. Sickness and disease spread. Babies cry and the old die.

Then comes the worst news of all in this catalog of misery. There won't be any work for three months, till spring. How do you survive for three months?

You can't get relief, for you haven't lived in California for a year. You start to beg for food, even for leftovers and rotting garbage. As a last resort, you steal it.

No wonder the townspeople watch you. They're afraid you'll steal them blind. They hate to see you coming down the street. Soon, fear turns to anger. They call out the sheriff, the deputies, anyone who can smash an Okie with a billy club.

And meanwhile you starve.

Back in Oklahoma when the drought came, the women studied their menfolk hunkering in the dust. Would they break under the strain?

Now the women study their men again. Again, the men hold together. When fearful men gather into groups, fears dissolve and anger takes over. As long as men have the capacity to feel anger, they'll never break.

^^^^^^^^^^THE GRAPES OF WRATH: CHAPTER 30

Outside the Joads' boxcar the floodwater creeps higher and higher. Soon it will spill over the threshold.

Wainwright thinks it's time to get out, but Pa Joad has another idea. They ought to build a levee. Wainwright protests, "Be a lot a work, an' then she might come over anyways." Pa has no argument with that, and when he's just about to agree, the problem is resolved in another way altogether.