Chapter 10
The family loads and leaves
Summary
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 Sallisaw with Al, Pa, Uncle John, Ruthie, Winfield, a pregnant Rose of Sharon and her husband Connie Rivers: the buyer gave eighteen dollars for everything the family owned. At the council round the truck Pa reports a hundred and fifty-four dollars, and when he wonders whether they can feed one more mouth Ma cuts him off — "It ain't kin we? It's will we?" — so Casy is taken in. They slaughter and salt the pigs that night, Casy insisting on helping and refusing the split into men's and women's work. Alone in the stripped bedroom Ma pockets a ring and earrings and burns her keepsake box. Muley refuses again to leave. Grampa says he is staying; they dose his coffee and load him asleep onto the truck.
Plates
Illustration style
Composition
Written: 22 June 1938 to 29 June 1938 Journal entries: #22, #23, #25, #27 Dating: from DeMott's editorial markers in Working Days
From the journal
22 June 1938, Wednesday, 11:45 — Entry #22
[…] the summer I think she will be in good shape. She needs not to think too much about anything. But now to work. Little sleep last night. Couldn’t get to sleep. And other things. And today I’ll have to buck into it. Beginning of a particular chapter [Ed.—Chapter 10] and that isn’t so bad. I’ll try to go through with […]
23 June 1938, Thursday, 11:00 — Entry #23
[…] him. Cigars maybe. We’ll eat on the way. I go to the dentist at four. After which digression, get back to work. And I feel relaxed about it too. Yesterday was a nervous drive. I notice my handwriting shows that. Beginning at any rate of the conference [Ed.—Chapter 10]. Enter all the rest of my actors. John, Rose of Sharon, […]
27 June 1938, Monday, 12:00 — Entry #25
[…] can work later this afternoon. Now for a discussion. Moment I stopped work the drive became sexual. Now the work will take that up. Now today’s work is the pig killing and salting and the loading of the truck and the departure and the capture of Grampa [Ed.—last sections of Chapter 10]. That is at least two days or maybe […]
29 June 1938, Wednesday, 11:30 — Entry #27
[…] Afraid of repetitiousness. Must watch that. And I really am doing a great number of words a day. Well, it is time to get to it. Time passes. But I have plenty of time. My system is collapsing towards the end of Book One. Just finished chap [Ed.—Chapter 10]. No more. Tomorrow the general. Then the first book will be […]
Source: Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath, 1938–1941, ed. Robert DeMott (Viking, 1989).