BQ’s Reviews > The Grapes of Wrath > Status Update

In the evening a strange thing happened: the 20 families became 1 family, the children were the children of all. & it might be that a sick child threw despair into the hearts of 20 families, that a birth there in a tent kept people quiet & filled people with the birth-joy in the morning. A family which the night before had been lost and fearful might search its goods to find a present for a new baby.

The cars of the migrant people crawled out of the side roads onto the great cross-country highway, & they took the migrant way to the West. & because they were lonely & perplexed, because they had all come from a place of sadness and worry & defeat, & because they were all going to a new mysterious place, they huddled together; talked together; shared their lives, food, & the things they hoped for in the new country.

“So long,” Tom called. “See ya maybe in California.” They turned across the highway and started back.

The one-eyed man watched them go, and then he went through the iron shed to his shack behind. It was dark inside. He felt his way to the mattress on the floor, and he stretched out and cried in his bed, and the cars whizzing by on the highway only strengthened the walls of his loneliness.

Mae's face was gay when the door opened and the two uniformed truck drivers entered....

"What'll it be, boys?"
"Oh, a cup a Java. What kinda pie ya got?"
"Pineapple cream an' banana cream an' chocolate cream an' apple."
"Give me apple. No, wait, what's that big thick one?"
Mae picked up the pie and smelled it. "Pineapple cream," she said.
"Well, chop out a hunk a that."

The cars whizzed viciously by on 66.

"Why, jus' think how it's gonna be, under them shady trees a pickin' fruit an' takin' a bite ever' once in a while. Why, hell, they don't care how much
you eat 'cause they got so much. An' with them good wages, maybe a fella can get hisself a little piece a land an' work out for extra cash. Why, hell, in a couple years I bet a fella could have a place of his own."

"But Ruthie was older, and she knew the tremendousness of the time. “And goin’ to California,” she said again. And she knew this was the great time in her life so far."

"IN THE LITTLE HOUSES the tenant people sifted their belongings and the belongings of their fathers and of their grandfathers. Picked over their possessions for the journey to the west. The men were ruthless because the past had been spoiled, but the women knew how the past would cry to them in the coming days."