Grapes Of Wrath Essay

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"The family met at the most important place, near the truck. The house was dead, and the fields were dead; but this truck was the active thing, the living principle."(128) Their change in values, was the first step in adapting. The change of environment came progressively: first at home, then their life on the road, and finally when they actually arrived in California. Life on the road was slow, unpredictable, and so very new to the Joads, who had never traveled before. "The moving, questing people were migrants now. Those families which had lived on a little piece of land, who had lived and died on forty acres, had eaten or starved on the produce of forty acres, had now the whole west to rove in."(362) In California things only got worse. Nine Joads and a preacher arrived in California, along with a million other migrants. Since there wasn�t any land for sale, people didn�t have homes. When the Joads first arrive and asked where they might be able to stay, the answer ...

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That was it, the Joad family had to just pick up and leave. Land wasn�t for sale anywhere; people couldn�t just move to a new place and resume their careers. The only work to be done was picking fruit on some large farm, which only lasted a short period while the fruit was ripe. Handbills were sent out when work was needed and people would come from all over to work. With so many people needing work, the owners could pay anything. "If that fella�ll work for thirty cents, I�ll work for twenty-five� I�ll work for food. I�ll work for a little piece of meat."(364) Owners were able to pay nearly nothing and still get more than enough people that the work only lasted a few days. ...

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