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The Grapes of Wrath

John Steinbeck, 1939. Thirty chapters, each with a summary, a short analysis, and the composition record from Steinbeck's journals — illustrated twice over, once as documentary photograph and once as Western modernist painting.

30 chapters · 216 plates per style

Illustration style

  1. The rain-heads hurry on
    The rain-heads hurry on

    Chapter 1 3 plates

    Dust settles on the corn

    An intercalary chapter with no named characters. Drought settles over the red and grey country of Oklahoma: the last gentle rains give way to a pale sky, the corn browns from the leaf edges…
  2. The red truck at the roadside restaurant
    The red truck at the roadside restaurant

    Chapter 2 10 plates

    Tom talks his way aboard

    Outside a roadside restaurant, a man in cheap new clothes and stiff new shoes waits by a red transport truck marked "No Riders". When the driver comes out, the man shames him into a lift —…
  3. The verge and the embankment
    The verge and the embankment

    Chapter 3 3 plates

    A turtle crosses the highway

    An intercalary chapter. A land turtle hauls itself across the grass verge and up the embankment of a concrete highway, picking up a head of wild oats in its front leg on the way. A woman in…
  4. The truck goes on without him
    The truck goes on without him

    Chapter 4 10 plates

    Tom meets the preacher Casy

    Tom Joad walks the dust road toward his father's farm, takes off his stiff new shoes, and picks up a land turtle as a present for his little brother. Under a scrawny willow he finds Jim Cas…
  5. The closed cars come onto the land
    The closed cars come onto the land

    Chapter 5 10 plates

    The tractors take the land

    An intercalary chapter, staged as a composite dialogue between owner men and tenant men. The owners explain that the tenant system is finished: the land is worn out and one man on a tractor…
  6. The Joad place from the hill
    The Joad place from the hill

    Chapter 6 10 plates

    The empty house, and Muley

    Tom and Casy find the Joad house shoved off its foundations, the tools gone, cotton planted to the door, and Ma's worn-out button shoe in the bedroom. Tom works out that the wrong thing is…
  7. The lot from the kerb
    The lot from the kerb

    Chapter 7 3 plates

    Patter of the used-car lot

    An intercalary chapter written almost entirely as the patter of a used-car lot. The dealer coaches his salesman Joe on how to soften up the dispossessed families now desperate for anything…
  8. Two men walking the cotton rows before dawn
    Two men walking the cotton rows before dawn

    Chapter 8 10 plates

    Reunion at Uncle John's

    Walking to Uncle John's at dawn, Tom tells Casy how John's young wife died of a burst appendix after he dismissed her pain, and how John has spent the years since giving things away to make…
  9. The junk dealer's lot
    The junk dealer's lot

    Chapter 9 3 plates

    Selling the ploughs and harness

    An intercalary chapter on the selling-off. The tenant men haul out ploughs, harrows, harness and teams and take whatever the junk dealers will give — fifty cents for a good plough, ten doll…
  10. Tom's last walk round the emptied place
    Tom's last walk round the emptied place

    Chapter 10 10 plates

    The family loads and leaves

    Ma tells Tom the California handbills seem too good to be true. Casy asks to come west, saying he will not preach or baptise but work in the fields and learn. The truck returns from Sallisa…
  11. The tractor man shuts the shed
    The tractor man shuts the shed

    Chapter 11 3 plates

    The houses left empty

    A short intercalary chapter on what is left behind. The only living things on the land are the corrugated-iron tractor sheds; a tractor, unlike a horse in a barn, is as dead as ore the mome…
  12. The mother road
    The mother road

    Chapter 12 3 plates

    Highway 66, the mother road

    An intercalary chapter that maps Highway 66 town by town from the Mississippi to Bakersfield and names it "the mother road, the road of flight". Families move along it in single cars and sm…
  13. West out of Sallisaw
    West out of Sallisaw

    Chapter 13 10 plates

    West on 66; Grampa dies

    The Hudson turns west on 66. Ma tells Al she refuses to live ahead of herself — "it's jus' the road goin' by for me". At a run-down filling station near Paden the owner keeps asking what th…
  14. The tractor turns the dooryard under
    The tractor turns the dooryard under

    Chapter 14 3 plates

    From 'I' to 'we'

    A short intercalary chapter arguing the politics of the migration. The great owners strike at unions, taxes and government, mistaking results for causes; the cause is hunger multiplied a mi…
  15. The hamburger stand on 66
    The hamburger stand on 66

    Chapter 15 10 plates

    The hamburger stand on 66

    An intercalary chapter set in a hamburger stand on 66, seen through Mae behind the counter and Al moody at the griddle. Rich tourists stop, drink a nickel soda, complain and leave; Mae call…
  16. Two cars crossing the Panhandle
    Two cars crossing the Panhandle

    Chapter 16 10 plates

    A thrown bearing in New Mexico

    Joads and Wilsons cross into New Mexico. Rose of Sharon confides her plan to leave the family for a town and a radio course for Connie. The Wilsons' car throws a bearing. Tom proposes he an…
  17. Out of the side roads onto the highway
    Out of the side roads onto the highway

    Chapter 17 10 plates

    Twenty families become one

    An intercalary chapter on the roadside camps. Each evening twenty families pull off 66 near water and become one family; each morning the world is torn down and packed onto the cars. Rights…
  18. The Arizona border guard
    The Arizona border guard

    Chapter 18 10 plates

    The desert crossing; Granma dies

    The Joads cross Arizona and reach the Colorado at Needles. Bathing in the shallows, they meet a father and son heading back to the Panhandle, who describe what waits: good land held fallow,…
  19. The Americans take the grant
    The Americans take the grant

    Chapter 19 10 plates

    How California got its owners

    An intercalary chapter giving the history behind California's hostility. Americans took the land from the Mexicans by hunger and force; their descendants lost the hunger, reckoned crops in…
  20. The basket outside the coroner's office
    The basket outside the coroner's office

    Chapter 20 10 plates

    Hooverville, and Casy is taken

    Granma goes to a pauper's burial in Bakersfield and the family camps in a Hooverville. Floyd Knowles explains the economics: handbills bring six thousand men for three thousand jobs, leader…
  21. The highways streamed with moving people
    The highways streamed with moving people

    Chapter 21 3 plates

    Both sides harden

    A short intercalary chapter on how the road changes both sides. The agrarian families become migrants, and the hostility they meet welds them together. Californians of property arm themselv…
  22. The gate at Weedpatch
    The gate at Weedpatch

    Chapter 22 10 plates

    The government camp at Weedpatch

    The Joads reach the Weedpatch government camp, where campers elect their own committees, no deputy may enter without a warrant, and there are showers and flush toilets. Tom gets pipe work t…
  23. The storyteller at the ditch-bank fire
    The storyteller at the ditch-bank fire

    Chapter 23 3 plates

    Stories, whisky and a dance

    An intercalary chapter on the pleasures the migrants make for themselves. Around the fires a storyteller earns his listeners; one tells of shooting an Apache who stood naked and cross-armed…
  24. Saturday morning at the wash tubs
    Saturday morning at the wash tubs

    Chapter 24 10 plates

    The dance and the planned fight

    Saturday night at Weedpatch. Forewarned, Ezra Huston's Central Committee plans to stop the planned fight without drawing blood, since bleeding would give the waiting deputies their pretext.…
  25. The heavy year
    The heavy year

    Chapter 25 3 plates

    The fruit left to rot

    The intercalary chapter that gives the novel its title. Spring in California is beautiful, and behind the fruitfulness stand men of real skill — plant breeders, chemists, graftsmen with sur…
  26. Ma calls the family to account
    Ma calls the family to account

    Chapter 26 10 plates

    The peach strike; Casy killed

    After a month at Weedpatch with no work and no food, Ma forces the family to move on. Before going she pierces Rose of Sharon's ears and gives her the gold earrings. State police lead them…
  27. A dollar for the bag
    A dollar for the bag

    Chapter 27 3 plates

    Cotton picking, and the scales

    An intercalary chapter on cotton picking, told in the pickers' own voices. Orange handbills draw the cars in. A bag costs a dollar, taken out of the first hundred and fifty pounds; the pay…
  28. The boxcar camp beside the stream
    The boxcar camp beside the stream

    Chapter 28 10 plates

    Ruthie tells; Tom says goodbye

    The Joads live in one end of a boxcar, sharing with the Wainwrights, and for a few weeks there is cotton work and meat every night. Then Ruthie, fighting over a box of Cracker Jack, boasts…
  29. The dikes go in
    The dikes go in

    Chapter 29 3 plates

    The winter rains begin

    An intercalary chapter on the winter rains. The clouds come in from the ocean, the earth drinks for two days, and then the fields become lakes and the streams break their banks. Tents flood…
  30. The second day of the rain
    The second day of the rain

    Chapter 30 10 plates

    The flood, and the barn

    The rain keeps on and the stream rises toward the boxcars. Rose of Sharon goes into labour early, so the family cannot leave; Pa rallies the men to throw up a mud-and-willow levee and they…