Al discusses this new journey with his mother at the beginning of this novel. "You scared a goin' to a new place (Steinbeck 124)?" He asked his ma. She claims she's not scared, but I can understand her hesitancy towards moving across the country. Oklahoma and California are two completely different states, so it would be a little unnerving starting over there. This was just one example of the tension between characters in this chapter. Another was when the family stopped at the gas station. Tom got into a heated discussion with the assistant and Jim Casy stepped in. "How'd you like to sell the bed you sleep on for a tankful a gas (Steinbeck 127)?" Casy asked the assistant. The question really opened my eyes. It was a great way to sum up what the Joad's had to go through in a simple and relatable way.
This chapter also contains a large part of the rising action of The Grapes of Wrath. Granpa Joad suffers a stroke and dies. I immediately thought back in the novel when Jim Casy asked to go on the journey with the family. Granma told the family it would be a good idea to travel with a preacher because "Ef somebody died, preacher buried 'em (Steinbeck 101)." Looking back, I can see that her dialogue was an example of foreshadowing. Although he didn't actually die until they got closer to California, some thought the action happened even before that. "An granpa didn' die tonight. He died the minute you took 'im off the place (Steinbeck 146)." I can agree with this statement because Granpa admitted that he didn't want to leave. He felt uncomfortable about traveling and this took his life away. However, there is one thing I would have changed about the granpa's death. I don't like how the family treated granma during this tragic time. They wouldn't let her see her husband after his stroke, and then they didn't even wake her for his funeral. The pair were always together, so I feel like that was very disrespectful of the family.
[Bibliography]
Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Scribner, 2002. Print.
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