The Grapes of Wrath-- Quotes Flashcards
Women and children knew…
deep in themselves that no misfortune was too great to bear if their men were whole.
The men sat still…
– thinking – figuring.
the dawn came…
but no day
The concrete highway was edged with…
a mat of tangled, broken, dry grass.
(Casy) there aint no sin…
and there aint no virture, theres just stuff people do
(Casy) I got the call to lead the people…
an’ no place to lead ‘em.
When the monster stops growing…
it dies. It can’t stay one size.
And all of them [the owners] were…
caught in something larger than themselves
Men ate what they had not raised…
The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died.
Muley: like a…
damn ol’ graveyard ghos’. I been goin’ aroun’ the places where stuff happened.”
“Fella gets use’ to a place, it’s hard to go,” said Casy…
“Fella gets use’ to a way of thinkin’ it’s hard to leave.”
The Western land, nervous under the beginning change. The Western States, nervous as horses before a thunder storm…
The great owners, nervous, sensing a change, knowing nothing of the nature of the change
And then all of a sudden..
the family began to function
She (ma) walked for the family and..
held her head straight for the family.
the twenty families became one family, the children were the children of all…
The loss of home became one loss, and the golden time in the West was one dream.
Rose of Sharon:] “Maybe right at first while Connie’s studyin’ at home it won’t be so easy, but …
– well, when the baby comes, maybe he’ll be all done studyin’ an’ we’ll have a place, little bit of a place.”
“Ma suddenly seemed to know it was all a dream. She turned her head forward again..
and her body relaxed, but the little smile stayed around her eyes.
[Casy:] “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.”
ma is the…
citadel of the family
a vacant house…
falls quickly apart
..they come into 66 from the tributary…
side roads… 66 is the mother road…
Men ravenous for work…
murderous for work
Men ravenous for work…
murderous for work
“I tried to tell you fellas,” he said. “Somepin it took me a year to find out….
Took two kids dead, took my wife dead to show me. (ragged man about the lies in california)
“They were not farm men…
any more, but migrant men.
“They were hungry and they were fierce. And they had …
hoped to find a home, and they found only hatred.”
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
Whenever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there (Tom Joad)
And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history:…
repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.”
The quality of owning freezes you …
forever in “I,” and cuts you off forever from the “we.”
The quality of owning freezes you …
forever in “I,” and cuts you off forever from the “we.”
Men sang the words..
and women hummed the tunes.
[the man swimming in the Colorado River:] “Well, Okie use’ ta mean you was from Oklahoma. …
Now it means you’re a dirty son-of-a-bitch. Okie means you’re scum.” (18.72)
[the man swimming in the Colorado River:] “Sure, nice to look at, but you can’t have none of it. They’s a grove…
of yella oranges – an’ a guy with a gun that got the right to kill you if you touch one.”
All California quickens with produce, and the fruit grows heavy, and the …
limbs bend gradually under the fruit so that little crutches must be placed under them to support the weight
[Ma Joad:] “I’m learning one thing good,” she said. “Learnin’ it all the time, ever’ day. …
If you’re in trouble or hurt or need – go to poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help – the only ones.”
Then the hungry men crowded the alleys behind the stores to beg for bread,
to beg for rotting vegetables, to steal when they could.
At night the frantic men walked boldly to hen roosts and carried off the squawking chickens…
If they were shot at, they did not run, but splashed sullenly away; and if they were hit, they sank tiredly in the mud.
[Ma Joad:] “Use’ ta be the family was fust…
It ain’t so now. It’s anybody.”
And the smell of…
rot fills the country.
And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit …
cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate—died of malnutrition—because the food must rot, must be forced to rot.
And now they [the Joads] were weary and frightened …
because they had gone against a system they did not understand and it had beaten them.
