Grapes of Wrath Lit book Summary notes

(I have read this book before, but it wasn't really an in depth analysis and I really enjoyed it.  I decided to read it again)

Grapes of Wrath Summary

• Tom Joad hitchhikes his way home

• He had just gotten out of a state penitentiary after killing someone

• While hitchhiking, he meets up with Jim Casy, his preacher when he was a kid

• The two make it to Tom’s old family farm, now abandoned

• Tom and Jim decide to camp there for the night

• An old friend, Muley Graves, stops by

• He tells how tenant farmers have been forced off the land and now that the land has dried up, there is dust everywhere

• All the old tenant farmers, nowhere to go, have begun moving out to California with the rumors of jobs and open space

• Muley tells them that the Joad family is staying at Uncle John Joad’s house

• Tom, Casy, and Muley are forced to leave as they see a car approach and flood the entire area with light, looking for trespassers

• Tom and Casy make it to Tom’s uncle’s house the next morning

• Tom sees his mom and dad again, grandpa, grandma, brother, both his sister, and his sister’s husband

• Grandpa resists the heading west but the rest of the family gives him a drowsy medicine and carry him to the car

• The Joad family gets in their car and sells some stuff in town for $18

• The 3 people in the cabin are the only ones protected from the heat of the sun

• They soon come across the Wilson family camped on the side of the road

• The Wilson’s allow Grandpa to lay in their tent, he soon dies of a stroke

• After the burial, the two families decide to join forces and caravan to California

• The Wilson’s car breaks down so the Joad’s go down the road to a campsite

• The car fixed now, the two families head off again

• The two families pass New Mexico and Arizona

• Noah tells the families that he isn’t traveling with them anymore and is going to stay at the Colorado river

• The Joad’s leave the Wilsons, Sairy being too sick to continue

• Getting to a boarder control, Ma tells them to let the Joads past fast, for they had a sick person in the back

• Ma is the only one to know that Grandma had died miles back

• The family arrives in Bakersfield

• They find a Hooverville and deposited Grandma’s body at The Bakersfield Coroner’s Office

• A contractor arrives in the Hooverville to announce that there are jobs available

• The family begins to fall apart

• They move to a government camp and then to a peach pickers camp

• Outside the camp are protesters of the price of pay

• Tom meets Casy as a surprise (He had left the group earlier)

• Authorities catch up to the men and Casy is killed

• Tom obtains a cut cheek and a black eye but kills the man that killed Casy

• The Joads sneak out of the peach camp and head out to pick cotton

• Ruthie tells someone that Tom had killed two men so Tom had to go into hiding

• Rose of Sharon’s baby is a still born

• Creeks begin to flood

• The box car begins to rise

• The Joad family decides that they need to move to a dry shelter

• They find a barn and inside are a man and his boy

• The man is half starved because he had  been feeding his boy

• Rose of Sharon asks everybody to leave and feeds the man her breast milk

THE END