Haneen Amireh’s Reviews > The Grapes of Wrath > Status Update

Thus they changed their social life changed as in the whole universe. only man can change. They were not farm men any more, but migrant men. And the thought, the planning, the long staring silence that had gone out to the fields

And when a baby died a pile of silver coins grew at the door flap, for a baby must be well buried, since it has had nothing else of life. An old man may be left in a potter's field, but not a baby.

And because they were lonely and perplexed, because they had all come from a place of sadness and worry and defeat, and because they were all going to a new mysterious place, they huddled together; they talked together; they shared their lives, their food, and the thing
they hoped for in the new country.

This is a free country. Fella can go where he wants.
That's what you think! Ever hear of the border patrol on the California line? Police from Los Angeles-stopped you bastards, turned you Says, if you can't buy no real estate we don't want you. Says, got a driver's license? Le's see it. Tore it up. Says you can't come in without no driver's license.
It's a free country.
Well, try to get some freedom to do.

"Yes, you should talk," he said.
"Sometimes a sad man can talk the sadness right out through his mouth.
Sometimes a killin' man can talk the murder right out of his mouth an' not do no murder. You done right. Don't you kill nobody if you can help it."

We all got to figure. There's some way to stop this. It's not like lightning or earthquakes. We've got a bad thing made by men, and by God that's something we can change."

"Funny thing how it is. If a man owns a little property, that property is him, it's part of him, and it's like him. If he owns property only so he can walk on it and handle it and be sad when it isn't doing well, and feel fine when the rain falls on it, that property is him, and some way he's bigger because he owns it. Even if he isn't successful he's big with his property. That is so

Women and children knew deep in themselves that no misfortune was too great to bear if their men were whole.

The dawn came, but no day.

Then it was June, and the sun shone more fiercely. The brown lines on the corn leaves widened and moved in on the central ribs. The weeds frayed and edged back toward their roots. The air was thin and the sky more pale; and every day the earth paled.