Key Quotes

Question 1

What does the author describe the land as in Chapter One?

Answer 1

‘Pale’

Question 2

What are the women and children concerned their family will do in Chapter One?

Answer 2

‘Break’

Question 3

How is the concerns of the women and children summarised in Chapter One?

Answer 3

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

Question 4

How does Tom outline initial criticisms of the rich in Chapter Two?

Answer 4

‘Sometimes a guy’ll be good even if some rich bastard makes him carry a sticker’.

Question 5

How does Tom describe the driver’s talkative nature in Chapter Two and what does this reveal?

Answer 5

‘Spread nets’ and ‘Set traps’ - Reveals Tom does not like deception.

Question 6

What does Casy believe the Holy Spirit is in Chapter Four?

Answer 6

‘One big soul ever’body’s a part of’.

Question 7

How is Tom’s utter unawareness of the Joad’s moving shown in Chapter Four?

Answer 7

‘Less somebody stole it, like Pa stole it’ - Ironically believes nobody would have stolen it.

Question 8

What are the banks described as in Chapter Five?

Answer 8

‘Monsters’ that enslave humans .

Question 9

What are the farmers described like in Chapter Five and why is this?

Answer 9

Self-loathing, cold and angry but only because of a system ‘larger than themselves’.

Question 10

What are tractor men described as doing to the land in Chapter Five?

Answer 10

The ‘rape’ of the land.

Question 11

What is the tractor man accused of doing by the farmer in Chapter Five?

Answer 11

Working ‘against his own people’.

Question 12

What does Muley Graves say about why he has not left in Chapter Six?

Answer 12

‘If only they didn’t tell me I got to get off, why, I’d prob’y be in California right now a-eating grapes and a-pickin an orange where I wanted’.

Question 13

What does Casy say when doing grace in Chapter Eight?

Answer 13

“I’m glad theres love here”.

Question 14

What do the farmers believe the buyers are in Chapter Nine?

Answer 14

No longer buyers of ‘junk’ but of ‘junked lives’.

Question 15

How does Ma establish her matriarchal role in regards to Casy in Chapter Ten?

Answer 15

Says at the family conference that it is not a matter of ‘can we’ but instead ‘will we’ - overriding Pa Joad.

Question 16

How is the relationship between the land and the farmer described in Chapter Eleven in comparison to the tractor man?

Answer 16

‘Kneeling in the earth to eat his lunch; that man who is more than his elements knows the land more than its analysis. But the machine man, driving a dead tractor on land, he does not know and love, understands only chemistry; and he is contemptuous of the land and of himself’.

Question 17

What is explained to happen to those in flight in Chapter Twelve?

Answer 17

‘The people in flight from the terror behind - strange things happen to them, some bitterly cruel and some so beautiful that faith is refired forever’.

Question 18

What do the Wilson’s say to the Joads after Granpa dies?

Answer 18

‘We’re proud to help. I ain’t felt so - safe in a long time’.

Question 19

What two events are described as happening on Route 66 in Chapter 12?

Answer 19

Both ‘bitterly cruel’ and ‘beautiful’.

Question 20

What do Mae and Al call the rich that barely tip in Chapter Fifteen?

Answer 20

“Shitheels”

Question 21

What is Pa confused about the handbills in Chapter Sixteen?

Answer 21

‘It don’t make no sense. This fella wants eight hundred men. So he prints up five thousand of them things an’ maybe twenty thousan’ people sees ‘em’.

Question 22

How does the narrator describe the building of these communities within migrant camps in Chapter Seventeen?

Answer 22

‘At first the families were timid in the building and tumbling worlds, but gradually the technique of building worlds became their technique’ - describes it as it were historical development.

Question 23

What happens to families in the migrant traveller camps in Chapter Seventeen?

Answer 23

‘Twenty families became one family’

Question 24

What are the migrant traveller camps likened to in Chapter Seventeen?

Answer 24

Small “worlds”.

Question 25

How does the narrator describe the effects of repression in Chapter Nineteen?

Answer 25

‘And the little screaming fact that sounds all through history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed’ - focuses on larger history of who owned and took over land in the West.

Question 26

What does Tom accuse the mayor of the camp of having become in Chapter Twenty?

Answer 26

“Bull-simple” and “Cop-happy”.

Question 27

What does Chapter Twenty-One outline the companies to be blind to?

Answer 27

‘The great companies did not know that the line between hunger and anger is a thin line’.

Question 28

What does the migrant reflect his sorrow on when telling a story in Chapter Twenty-Three?

Answer 28

Destroying ‘somepin better’n you’.

Question 29

How do migrants react when preachers preach sermons or baptise crowds in camps in Chapter Twenty-Three?

Answer 29

They ‘grovel and whine’.

Question 30

What does the man say after telling Pa his story about Akron in Chapter Twenty-Four?

Answer 30

“I been thinkin’ maybe we ought to get up a turkey shootin’ club an’ have meetin’s ever’ Sunday’.

Question 31

What key quote underlines the selfish perversion of nature in Chapter Twenty-Five?

Answer 31

“In the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage”.

Question 32

How does Ma show her anger for the lack of compassion within the more fortunate in Chapter Twenty-Six?

Answer 32

“If you’re in trouble or hurt or need - go to the poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help - the only ones’”.

Question 33

What does Tom say about his realisation in the wilderness in Chapter Twenty-Eight?

Answer 33

‘Says a wilderness ain’t no good, cause his little piece of a soul wasn’t no good less it was with the rest, an’ was whole. Funny how I remember. Didn’ think I was even listening. But now I know a fella ain’t no good alone’.

Question 34

What does Uncle John say the baby will do in Chapter Thirty?

Answer 34

To ‘go down and tell em. Go down in the street an rot an tell em that way’ - convey the suffering of the migrants to those in town.

Question 35

What does Casy say about religion in Chapter Four?

Answer 35

“There ain’t no sin and there ain’t no virtue. Theres just stuff people do. It’s all part of the same thing’.

Question 36

How is the relationship between the landowners and the tenant farmer’s described in Chapter Five?

Answer 36

‘Some of them were cold because they had long ago found out that one could not be an owner unless one were cold. And all of them were caught in something larger than themselves’.

Question 37

What does Casy say to Granma when saying Grace in Chapter Eight?

Answer 37

‘I couldn’t figure out what I was praying to or for. There was the hills an’ there was me, an’ we wasn’t separate no more. We was one thing. An’ that thing was holy”.