The Grapes of Wrath

Question 1

“…sometimes a guy’ll be a good guy even if some rich bastard makes him carry a sticker.”

Answer 1

Speaker: Tom Joad
Related themes: Humanity, Inhumanity, and Dehumanization, Powerlessness, Perseverance, and Resistance, Family, Friendship, and Community

Question 2

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

Answer 2

The Grapes of Wrath

Question 3

“There ain’t no sin and there ain’t no virtue. There’s just stuff people do.”

Answer 3

The Grapes of Wrath

Question 4

“And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.”

Answer 4

The Grapes of Wrath

Question 5

“it was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials.”

Answer 5

The Grapes of Wrath

Question 6

“You’re bound to get idears if you go thinkin’ about stuff”

Answer 6

The Grapes of Wrath

Question 7

“How can we live without our lives? How will we know it’s us without our past?”

Answer 7

The Grapes of Wrath

Question 8

“The quality of owning freezes you forever in “I,” and cuts you off forever from the “we.”

Answer 8

The Grapes of Wrath

Question 9

“and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and 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.”

Answer 9

The Grapes of Wrath

Question 10

“Before I knowed it, I was sayin’ out loud, ‘The hell with it! There ain’t no sin and there ain’t no virtue. There’s just stuff people do. It’s all part of the same thing.’ . . . . I says, ‘What’s this call, this sperit?’ An’ I says, ‘It’s love. I love people so much I’m fit to bust, sometimes.’ . . . . I figgered, ‘Why do we got to hang it on God or Jesus? Maybe,’ I figgered, ‘maybe it’s all men an’ all women we love; maybe that’s the Holy Sperit-the human sperit-the whole shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul ever’body’s a part of.’ Now I sat there thinkin’ it, an’ all of a suddent-I knew it. I knew it so deep down that it was true, and I still know it.”

Answer 10

The Grapes of Wrath

Question 11

“Death was a friend, and sleep was Death’s brother.”

Answer 11

The Grapes of Wrath

Question 12

“Up ahead they’s a thousan’ lives we might live, but when it comes it’ll on’y be one.”

Answer 12

The Grapes of Wrath

Question 13

“Muscles aching to work, minds aching to create - this is man.”

Answer 13

The Grapes of Wrath

Question 14

“She seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken. And since old Tom and the children could not know hurt or fear unless she acknowledged hurt or fear, she had practiced denying them in herself. And since, when a joyful thing happened, they looked to see whether joy was on her, it was her habit to build laughter out of inadequate materials….She seemed to know that if she swayed the family shook, and if she ever deeply wavered or despaired the family would fall.”

Answer 14

The Grapes of Wrath

Question 15

“If he needs a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to me he needs it ‘cause he feels awful poor inside hisself, and if he’s poor in hisself, there ain’t no million acres gonna make him feel rich, an’ maybe he’s disappointed that nothin’ he can do ‘ll make him feel rich.”

Answer 15

The Grapes of Wrath

Question 16

“Our people are good people; our people are kind people. Pray God some day kind people won’t all be poor.”

Answer 16

The Grapes of Wrath

Question 17

“And this you can know- fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe.”

Answer 17

The Grapes of Wrath

Question 18

“Women can change better’n a man,” Ma said soothingly. “Woman got all her life in her arms. Man got it all in his head.”

“Man, he lives in jerks-baby born an’ a man dies, an’ that’s a jerk-gets a farm and looses his farm, an’ that’s a jerk. Woman, its all one flow, like a stream, little eddies, little waterfalls, but the river, it goes right on. Woman looks at it like that. We ain’t gonna die out. People is goin’ on-changin’ a little, maybe, but goin’ right on.”

Answer 18

The Grapes of Wrath

Question 19

“This is the thing to bomb. This is the beginning—from “I” to “we”. If you who own the things people must have could understand this, you might preserve yourself. If you could separate causes from results, if you could know that Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin were results, not causes, you might survive. But that you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezes you forever into “I”, and cuts you off forever from the “we”. ”

Answer 19

The Grapes of Wrath

Question 20

“Whenever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Whenever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there . . . . I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad an’-I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folks eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build-why, I’ll be there.” Tom Joad”

Answer 20

The Grapes of Wrath

Question 21

“We’re Joads. We don’t look up to nobody. Grampa’s grampa, he fit in the Revolution. We was farm people till the debt. And then—them people. They done somepin to us. Ever’ time they come seemed like they was a-whippin’ me—all of us. An’ in Needles, that police. He done somepin to me, made me feel mean. Made me feel ashamed. An’ now I ain’t ashamed. These folks is our folks—is our folks. An’ that manager, he come an’ set an’ drank coffee, an’ he says, ‘Mrs. Joad’ this, an’ ‘Mrs. Joad’ that—an’ ‘How you getting’ on, Mrs. Joad?’” She stopped and sighed. “Why, I feel like people again.”

Answer 21

The Grapes of Wrath