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

As the novel ends, the flood waters rise and the food runs out. Conditions for the migrants could not be worse. By all rights, they should finally be crushed. But they're not. The migrant families will endure regardless of any hardship they meet, for when defeat is near they can depend on dauntless figures like Ma Joad to carry them through.

^^^^^^^^^^THE GRAPES OF WRATH: JIM CASY

Do you find it surprising that Jim Casy, one of the three most important characters in The Grapes of Wrath--along with Tom and Ma Joad--does not appear in about one-third of the book? He disappears from the time of his arrest until Tom meets him again outside Hooper Ranch. Yet we rarely forget him; the Joad family reminds us of him repeatedly. Both Ma and Tom often recall Casy's ideas and words.

Casy carries weight because of what he says rather than what he does. He talks a lot. As a former preacher, he is used to talking, and although he's given up his trade, he can't keep still. What has changed, however, is what he talks about.

We hear him tell Tom about his recent retreat from organized Christian religion. Hypocrisy and a weakness for women have forced him to reexamine his beliefs. After some hard thinking it came to him that sex was no sin, just something that people do. He also discovered that he didn't need Jesus and God to explain the love he felt for life and people. People, in fact, were what he loved most--much more than Jesus, who was just someone about whom stories were told. As for the individual soul, which each person is supposed to tend all his life, well, that didn't make sense to Casy any more. "Maybe all men got one big soul everbody's a part of," he says to Tom soon after the two men meet.

Casy describes his avid love for people as a force so strong it makes him "fit to bust." Despite his enthusiasm, though, he's in a dilemma. He's got something to give and no one to give it to. Most of the people have abandoned their farms and are moving away. All except Muley Graves, whose solitary rebellion triggers a thought in Casy's mind. Muley innocently mumbles an idea about sharing a jack rabbit with Casy and Tom for dinner. "I ain't got no choice in the matter," he says. If another fellow is hungry, he can't just go away and eat alone. "Muley's got a-holt of somepin," responds Casy, "an' it's too big for him, an' it's too big for me." What Muley had "a-holt" of was a philosophy of life, a credo to live by. That night, instead of sleeping, Casy figures out how he can act on Muley's idea. When you consider Casy's actions in the remainder of the book, you can probably infer what thoughts churned in his mind that night.

Casy can't act on his principles right away. First he must find the means to get to California. Fortunately, Ma Joad, always the generous soul, invites Casy to join her family. En route, he earns his keep. Even though he's no longer a man of God, he says grace, performs funeral rites for Grampa, and helps Tom repair the Wilsons' car.

In Hooverville, Casy at last gets his chance to practice what he has started to preach. Tom trips the deputy sheriff who wants to arrest Floyd, an innocent man. Casy joins the fray and knocks the man out with a kick to the neck. When the sheriff returns to haul Tom to jail, Casy volunteers to go in Tom's place: "Somebody got to take the blame... an' I ain't doin' nothin' but set aroun'." You could argue that someone who espouses love, as Casy does, has no business kicking fallen men, but Casy's action may be justified in this case because the deputy was aiming his rifle at Floyd, fleeing into the willows.

Months later we run into Casy again. Out of jail, he has begun to organize the workers, and in fact, he leads the strike at Hooper Ranch. He has translated his love for people into an effort to show them that their strength lies in collective action. Love can help them only so much. But if the love he feels can be turned into work in their behalf, then his love will serve some useful purpose. He tells the people that together they have power; fragmented, they don't stand a chance against their oppressors.

Because union organizers are less popular than frost among the fruit farmers, Casy has undertaken a perilous occupation. The owners won't stand for unionization and will resort to strong-arm tactics to prevent it. In spite of the risk, Casy devotes his life--and ultimately gives it--to the union movement.

On the night of Tom and Casy's reunion, thugs come to find Casy. As he is about to be clubbed to death, Casy turns to his attackers and says, "You fellas don' know what you're doin'." In effect, Casy sacrifices himself so that others may be better off. His action is Christ-like, and his final words call to mind Christ's last words, too. Perhaps it is more than a coincidence that Casy's initials are J. C.

^^^^^^^^^^THE GRAPES OF WRATH: PA JOAD

If The Grapes of Wrath were a typical American novel about Oklahoma sharecroppers, you might reasonably expect the father to be strong and virile. But the novel isn't typical and Pa Joad doesn't fit the mold.

By tradition, age, and sex, Pa is the head of the Joad family. (Don't count Grampa Joad because he's gone silly in the head.) When the family holds meetings to make decisions, Pa presides. Pa convinces the family to bury Grampa in a roadside grave, and Pa rallies the men at the boxcar camp to help build a floodwall. Nevertheless, Pa often takes a back seat to Ma as head of the family. Steinbeck tells us that Pa "could not know hurt or fear unless she [Ma] acknowledged hurt or fear." A man who depends on another to confirm his own feelings has got to be rather wobbly.

Before the Joads become migrants Pa probably couldn't admit, either to himself or others, that Ma was made of sturdier stuff than he. It would hurt too much. Once on the road, however, the old ways don't count anymore. Ma's revolt--when she vows to clobber with a jack handle anyone who dares to defy her word--puts Pa finally in second place. Never again can he even pretend to be the leader, at least not within the family.

If Ma is solid oak, Pa is soft wood--pliable and easily split. On the night that Noah, the first-born son, came into the world, for example, Pa cracked. Alone in the house with Ma, the poor woman shrieking in agony, Pa panicked. He tried to pull the baby from the womb, twisting and stretching the head in the process. Noah grew up strange, always slightly out of touch with the world. Whenever Pa saw Noah, he felt ashamed.

It made sense for Steinbeck to give Ma Joad a faltering husband. Throughout the novel Ma has enough to contend with; she doesn't need a scrappy mate, too. In fact, Ma's perseverance stands out in contrast to Pa's infirmities. When Pa sags, Ma bolsters him. Pa tells her that going out daily to look for work and coming back empty-handed "puts a weight on ya." Ma deliberately tries to anger him to test his grit. She claims that men who don't do their jobs don't have the right to make decisions. If Pa were a broken man, he wouldn't respond to her taunts. But he comes back at her in a rage, and Ma is so pleased. It shouldn't surprise us. Why shouldn't Pa stay whole with Ma around to hold him together?

^^^^^^^^^^THE GRAPES OF WRATH: UNCLE JOHN

Uncle John divides his life into two parts: there's the part before his wife died and the part after. We don't hear much about the earlier years. But we know that John has been in pain every day since his tragic loss.

In time, most people recover from the loss of loved ones. Why hasn't John? We overhear Tom Joad telling Casy why: "He figures it's his fault his woman died." John feels guilty for refusing to call the doctor when his young bride of four months complained of stomach pains. He gave her a dose of painkiller instead. The next day she died of a burst appendix.

John considers his misdeed a sin, for which he has to suffer every day of his life. Sometimes he can't take the torment and drowns his woes in drink.

He blames the Joad family's misfortunes on himself and his sin. He also calls himself a burden on the family. Maybe, he says, he should have stayed back in Oklahoma. Is John belittling himself to win sympathy? Perhaps, because people who tear themselves down are often asking indirectly for a shoulder to lean on. If all he wants is a word of encouragement, though, he's picked the wrong group. The Joads are pretty tired of John's whining and often tell him to keep still and pull himself together.

If John weren't a Joad, he'd be like one of the roadside characters that the family meets--a man like the fat filling-station attendant and the one-eyed man in the junk yard. He'd need a good talking-to by Tom Joad, who'd tell him to quit wallowing in self-pity and start making something of himself. But since he is a Joad, Pa's older brother, in fact, the family carries him along.

Does John seem out of place in a family that symbolizes endurance and courage? Perhaps, but the Joads accommodate him easily. Then, too, John's weaknesses contrast with the others' strengths. Having a member of the clan who's mired in melancholy--and what family doesn't have one?--helps make the Joads altogether more human.

Near the end of the story, Uncle John surprises us. He volunteers to bury Rose of Sharon's stillborn baby. But instead of finding a burial site, he launches the apple-crate coffin into a roadside stream and shouts, "Go down an' tell 'em. Go down in the street and rot an' tell 'em that way." In his own way John has reenacted the moment in the Old Testament when Moses' mother sends her infant son into the bulrushes to keep him from growing up in bondage. In his version of the incident, John sends a bitter message to the world about the conditions of his people. It's his most daring act in the whole novel.