Chapter 16
A thrown bearing in New Mexico
Summary
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 and Casy stay to repair it while the rest push on; Ma takes up a jack handle, dares Pa to whip her, and wins, saying all the family has left is being unbroken. Tom and Al buy a used con-rod from a bitter one-eyed man at a wrecking yard and fit it by flashlight the same night. At the camp the proprietor charges fifty cents and invokes the vagrancy law. A ragged man returning from California explains the handbills: a contractor needing eight hundred men prints five thousand bills so thousands come, then pays whatever the hungriest accept — a lesson that cost him two children and his wife. Pa asks Casy whether it is true; Casy answers that it was the truth for that man.
Plates
Illustration style
Composition
Written: 18 July 1938 to 25 July 1938 Journal entries: #38, #40, #42, #43 Dating: from DeMott's editorial markers in Working Days
From the journal
18 July 1938, Monday, 11:15 — Entry #38
[…] slowly. Got this god damned nasty rodeo to get out of my system. Problems pile up so that this book moves like a Tide Pool snail with a shell and barnacles on its back. Well, I’ve got to get to it. The Joads and Wilsons move on [Ed.—beginning of Chapter 16]. Think I’ll take them quite a way this time […]
20 July 1938, Wednesday, 11:15 — Entry #40
[…] 50 days of work. I hope we get to California by then because I would like half the time out here. That is the important part—out here. Today I must get the family split—perhaps Tom and Casy to Santa Rosa, or Tom at least for the part [Ed.—Chapter 16]. I think it may be all right. I hope so and […]
22 July 1938, Friday, 10:20 — Entry #42
[…] it all right. If my self discipline will let me go on working while hell pops around my ears, I’ll be all right. I’ll know I am all right. I just hope the work isn’t suffering. And now to it. Must build some on this one-eyed man [Ed.—the junkyard scene in Chapter 16]. And now that’s done and I can […]
25 July 1938, Monday, 10:20 — Entry #43
[…] is time for me to get to work. Got to. Even if I have plenty of time. I get assailed with old times. Last night particularly. The flies are in this house on my arms. Here I could have had only half a page of work done [Ed.—still on Chapter 16]. This diary is really valuable to me though. Keeps […]
Source: Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath, 1938–1941, ed. Robert DeMott (Viking, 1989).