Grapes of Wrath Chapters 17, 18, and 19

"A strange thing happened: the twenty families became one family" (Steinbeck 193). Chapter 17 was not a depressing one! The majority of the non Joad narration chapters have been slightly depressing with the time setting being in the Great Depression and the unfortunate families never catching a break. This chapter was about how a single family formed a community with other families and how they all took care of each other. It was reassuring because the "Okies" have no one else to turn to, but others in the same situation as themselves. Fortunately other "Okies" are kind too and everyone benefits from having the extra people around.

The next chapter is a Joad chapter. The Joads arrive very anticlimactically in California. Not that I expected them to arrive in a lush, fertile grape vineyard and immediately get good steady jobs and live happily ever after (plus there is 200 pages left, so I figured the Joads had some bad things coming their way still), but their arrive still was very unexciting. Then Tom and Pa meet two men who are leaving California because they can't find work. They warn the Joads. Which of course is not reassuring to Tom and Pa. They expected jobs to be plentiful, not to be scarce, or nonexistent. Then Granma is really sick and hallucinating about her dead husband. Which I figured she would die at some point in this book (see the Death Chapter post). But to have Ma lie next to her dead body all night is awful. Ma is one strong woman. She not only has to ensure that the family stays together and is healthy, but emotionally she is the core of the family. The children look to her to make sure everything is okay, she makes Pa continue on when he is ready to quit, and she makes sure that everyone knows that it will be okay in the end.

Chapter 19 is another depressing short story. The former farmers, now migrants, can't feed their family. So they see fruitful land that could be used to farm crop, but isn't being used. The migrants take some seed and farm a small patch of land for extra food for their family. Then the police destroy the crop and in doing so, crush the hopes of the former farmers. They still can't catch a break.

Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Penguin, 2006. Print.