GOW: Family & Community

Question 1

The Joad Family and The Migrant Community

Answer 1

• Steinbeck argues that it’s not genetics that establishes kinship, it’s their loyalty and commitment to one another
• Life on the road teaches them to not just be loyal to people related by blood but instead to the wider community as they are all suffering the same thing

Question 2

The Joad and Wilson Families

Answer 2

• The kinship between the Joad’s and the wider migrant community is symbolised by the Wilson’s who the Joad’s quickly bond with like family due to their shared need to survive
• In the face of adversity the livelihood of the migrants depends upon their unity

Question 3

‘twenty families became one family […] the loss became one loss and the golden time in the west was one dream’

Answer 3

All of the migrants share hardships but they also share a dream and they only have hope of achieving this if they hand together in the face of adversity

Question 4

‘All we got is the family unbroken’

Answer 4

Encapsulates the theme of community and emphasises the strength and resilience that arises from the familial bond and support from a community of individuals united by their struggle through similar hardships

Question 5

Fan - ‘[Jim Casy’s] messages considerably broaden man’s sense of spiritual community’

Answer 5

Community is cherished over individualism Casy, much like jesus, he teaches them that people can flourish when they are part of a community