One family, one road, and the grapes of wrath ripening in every soul.
Who drives the story
Paroled killer, second Joad son, the novel's spine. He starts out looking after number one and ends up vowing to be everywhere the fight is, a fugitive carrying his family's whole rage.
The family's matriarch and, piece by piece, its actual leader. She lies to an inspection guard to save her family, weeps at kindness, and forces everyone through grief without stopping.
A fallen preacher who trades religion for people, then for organizing. He takes a fall for a stranger and dies with a pick handle in his skull—the book's martyr.
Eighteen, pregnant, dreamy, abandoned by her husband. She delivers a stillborn child and then, in the novel's final image, nurses a starving stranger with the milk meant for it.
The old generation. Grampa is drugged to leave the land he belongs to and dies the first night out; Granma loses her will after him and dies crossing the desert.
Also in the story
Fifty, a hardworking tenant farmer who loses the farm and then his authority. As his role shrinks, Ma quietly takes over.
The first deserters. Noah, the strange eldest son, walks off to fish the Colorado; Connie abandons his pregnant wife for a fantasy of tractors.
The youngest Joads, feral and funny. Ruthie's childish bragging forces Tom out of hiding.
The neighbor who stays. He shows what happens to the man who won't leave: lonely, hunted, stubborn as the turtle on the highway.
Fellow migrants who prove family can be chosen. The Wilsons share the road and Grampa's death; the Wainwrights share the cotton camp and the flood.
How they are connected
Ruthie's childish bragging forces Tom out of hiding.
The Wilsons and WainwrightsGrampa and Granma Joad
The Wilsons share the road and Grampa's death; the Wainwrights share the cotton camp and the flood.
Go deeper
The monster · From I to we · Dignity under pressure · Wrath and its harvest
Themes explainedThe full story act by act, the ending explained and a quick quiz.
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