The Grapes of Wrath Anger Quotes

After a while the faces of the watching men lost their bemused perplexity and became hard and angry and resistant. Then the women knew that they were safe and that there was no break.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 1. Initially the poor Oklahoma tenant farmers are confused and bewildered by the Dust Bowl’s destruction of their crops. But that reaction soon turns to anger and resistance, as they refuse to break and their instincts of survival and perseverance kick in. Despite the dying crops, the women believe that their men are not broken and their faces reflect hope. The desire of the fathers and husbands to be seen as men, breadwinners who can still provide for their family, is evident here. Instead of sinking into despair and hopelessness, the men maintain their dignity and react with anger.

Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold. And all of them were caught in something larger than themselves. Some of them hated the mathematics that drove them, and some were afraid, and some worshiped the mathematics because it provided a refuge from thought and from feeling.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 5. Steinbeck criticizes the capitalist trap which landowners are caught in, compelling them to evict tenants from uneconomical farms. Some owners are said to be kind and even angry at having to do this, making them appear human. But others learn to be cold, making them appear inhumane. But all have one thing in common: they have to evict people from their homes because of the capitalist economic system.

And now the squatting men stood up angrily. Grampa took up the land, and he had to kill Indians and drive them away. And Pa was born here and he killed weeds and snakes. Then a bad year came and he had to borrow a little money. An’ we was born here. There in the door – our children were born here. And Pa had to borrow money then. The bank owned the land then, but we stayed and got a little bit of what we raised.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 5. When the landowners tell the tenant families that they must quit the land that they have been farming for generations, they react angrily. We learn that the bank got ownership of the land when the tenants had to borrow money in a bad year. But we should also note how the tenants acquired the land in the first place: they killed Indians and drove them off the land. It is ironic that the same thing is now happening to them.

"If on’y they didn’t tell me I got to get off, why, I’d prob’y be in California right now a-eatin’ grapes an’ a-pickin’ an orange when I wanted. But them sons-a-bitches says I got to get off – an’, Jesus Christ, a man can’t, when he’s tol’ to!"

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 6. An angry Muley Graves reveals that the only reason he is not in California with his family is because he won’t told what to do. The landowners told him to leave, so he showed his resistance by staying. Muley is the classic example of a stubborn person, choosing dignity and resistance over what others would see as pragmatism. He is the solitary one among all the evicted tenant farmers who remains behind.

"An’ then I’d want to go in town an’ kill folks. ‘Cause what’d they take when they tractored the folks off the lan’? What’d they get so their ‘margin a profit’ was safe? They got Pa dyin’ on the groun’, an’ Joe yellin his first breath, an’ me jerkin’ like a billy goat under a bush in the night. What’d they get? God knows the land’ ain’t no good. Nobody been able to make a crop for years. But thems sons-a-bitches at their desks, they jus’ chopped folks in tow for their margin a profit. They jus’ cut ’em in two. Place were folks live is them folks. They ain’t whole, out lonely on the road in a piled-up car. They ain’t alive no more. Them sons-a-bitches killed ’em."

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 6. This quote demonstrates Muley Graves’ total attachment to his home, refusing to leave it even after his family is evicted. They headed off to California without him. The land holds too many old family memories for Muley: his father dying there, Joe being born, and fourteen-year-old Muley laying with his first girl. He angrily indicts the greedy and inhuman banks for killing his family for profit by tractoring them off their land. He now would like to kill them.

To California or any place – every one a drum major leading a parade of hurts, marching with our bitterness. And some day – the armies of bitterness will all be going the same way. And they’ll all walk together, and there’ll be a dead terror from it.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 9. This passage reminds one of the opening lines of the American patriotic song, <em>The Battle Hymn of the Republic</em>, which sings of the fight to end slavery. Steinbeck appears to advocate a socialist revolution, here as in other parts of the novel that take a stand against social injustice. He warns that the bitter army of angry sharecroppers will one day rise up in a united resistance to the injustices perpetrated against them.

The proprietor said, "If you wanta pull in here an’ camp it’ll cost you four bits. Get a place to camp an’ water an’ wood. An’ nobody won’t bother you."
"What the hell," said Tom. "We can sleep in the ditch right beside the road, an’ it won’t cost nothin’."
The owner drummed his knee with his fingers. "Deputy sheriff comes on by in the night. Might make it tough for ya. Got a law against sleepin’ out in this State. Got a law about vagrants."
"If I pay you a half a dollar I ain’t a vagrant, huh?"
"That’s right."
Tom’s eyes glowed angrily.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 16. This conversation develops when the Joad family pulls up at a place to camp for the night. Tom reacts refuses to pay the exploitative landowner who demands a 50 cents fee in order to sleep there. When Tom says that he will sleep for free at the side of the road, the camp owner threatens him with a visit from the deputy sheriff for being a vagrant. But he won’t be a vagrant if he pays half a dollar, the owner confirms. This display of corruption with law enforcement working hand in glove with greedy landowners provokes Tom’s anger.

"I tried to tell you folks," he said. "Somepin it took me a year to find out. Took two kids dead, took my wife dead to show me. But I can’t tell you. I should of knew that. Nobody couldn’t tell me, neither. I can’t tell ya about them little fellas layin’ in the tent with their bellies puffed out an’ jus’ skin on their bones, an’ shiverin’ an’ whinin’ like pups, an’ me runnin’ aroun’ tryin’ to get work – not for money, not for wages!" he shouted.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 16. The angry ragged man at the campsite tells the Joads his distressing story about life for him and his family in California. Unable to get work in the state, his wife and two children died from starvation. The promised good life there turned out to be a lie for them.

And the dispossessed, the migrants, flowed into California, two hundred and fifty thousand, and three hundred thousand. Behind them new tractors were going on the land and the tenants were being forced off. And new waves were on the way, new waves of the dispossessed and the homeless, hardened, intent, and dangerous.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 19. Steinbeck uses a metaphor to compare the flood of migrants to a huge, untoppable, dangerous wave flowing over California. Driving that wave are the tractors that force the tenants from their farms. There is an undercurrent of anger suggested here, with Steinbeck using words like "hardened, intent and dangerous."

Floyd said angrily, "You didn’ say how many men, an’ you didn’ say what you’d pay."
"Goddamn it, I don’t know yet."
"If you don’ know, you got no right to hire men."
"I got a right to run my own business my own way."

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 20. Floyd Knowles angrily confronts a contractor who comes to the Hooverville camp to hire fruit pickers for low wages. Floyd has been caught before by contractors promising a certain pay on some distant farm, then arriving to find they get paid half that. So Floyd demands that the contractor show him his license and a signed work order saying where, when and how much the work will pay.

"If it was the law they was workin’ with, why, we could take it. But it ain’t the law. They’re a-workin’ away at our spirits. They’re a-tryin’ to make us cringe an’ crawl like a whipped bitch. They tryin’ to break us. Why, Jesus Christ, Ma, they comes a time when the on’y way a fella can keep his decency is by takin’ a sock at a cop. They’re workin’ on our decency."

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 20. Tom Joad explains to his mother why he is so angry with the police deputies, as she attempts to restrain him. He is bitter about the way they mistreat and humiliate migrants, stamping on their dignity. He wants to fight back and take "a sock" at them.

And now the great owners and the companies invented a new method. A great owner bought a cannery. And when the peaches and the pears were ripe he cut the price of fruit below the cost of raising it. And as cannery owner he paid himself a low price for the fruit and kept the price of canned goods up and took his profit. And the little farmers who owned no canneries lost their farms, and they were taken by the great owners, the banks, and the companies who also owned the canneries. As time went on, there were fewer farms. The little farmers moved into town for a while and exhausted their credit, exhausted their friends, their relatives. And then they too went on the highways. And the roads were crowded with men ravenous for work, murderous for work.
And the companies, the banks worked at their own doom and they did not know it. The fields were fruitful, and starving men moved on the roads. The granaries were full and the children of the poor grew up rachitic, and the pustules of pellagra swelled on their sides. The great companies did not know that the line between hunger and anger is a thin line. And money that might have gone to wages went for gas, for guns, for agents and spies, for blacklists, for drilling. On the highways the people moved like ants and searched for work, for food. And the anger began to ferment.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 21. Steinbeck continues his blistering attack on large-scale commercial agriculture, which not only drives Oklahoma sharecroppers into poverty, but small California farmers too. Big companies buy the canneries, underbid the small farmer for his produce and put him out of business. So the small California farmer joins the Dust Bowl migrants in the desperate search to find work and survive. But there is a warning for greedy business owners and banks, who invest profits in putting down rebellion by workers instead of paying them decent wages. By ignoring the growing "murderous" anger of hungry workers, the companies and banks are ensuring their own doom. There is foreshadowing here of a fightback against their inhuman methods.

The redness of his face deepened with anger…"We had a meeting last night. Now, do you know who runs the Farmers Association? I’ll tell you. The Bank of the West. That bank owns most of this valley, and it’s got paper on everything it don’t own. So last night the member from the bank told me, he said, ‘You’re paying thirty cents an hour. You’d better cut it down to twenty-five.’ I said, ‘I’ve got good men. They’re worth thirty.’ And he says, ‘It isn’t that,’ he says. ‘The wage is twenty-five now. If you pay thirty, it’ll only cause unrest.’"

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 22. Here we meet a decent small farmer Mr. Thomas, who pay his workers as fair a wage as he can. But he is being pressured by other landowners and the banks to cut migrants wages from thirty cents to twenty-five. He is angry at having to do this, but is forced to do it by the greedy and inhumane system. This passage exposes the corruption of the Farmer’s Assocation.

The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit – and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.
And the smell of rot fills the country.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 25. In California there is a bountiful harvest and over-abundance of food. It goes to waste, because in order to keep up the price the farm owners believe it must be destroyed. We get the horrifying image of "golden mountains" of oranges having kerosene sprayed on them, while a million people go hungry. This is uncontrolled industrial farming and quest for profits run amok, as a corrupt economic system scales new heights of inhumanity. The "smell of rot" not only refers to the wasted food, but also to the rotten system. Steinbeck brands the farmers’ actions a "crime" and speaks of the farm employees’ anger at having to carry it out.

The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; 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.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 25. The chapter’s final words are Biblical in tone expressing almost a sentiment of doom. The last sentence references the song <em>Battle Hymn of the Republic</em> written by Julia Howe shortly before the American Civil War. The novel’s title is taken from a line of the song: "Mine eyes hath seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword; His truth is marching on." The "grapes of wrath" metaphor is also an allusion to Revelations 14:19 where evil people perish: "And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great wine press of the wrath of God. And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the wine press, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs." A number of themes are in play in this important passage from the novel. They include the inhumanity of the large farmers, their greed, the anger of the people and the hunger that drives that anger. Steinbeck warns of the rising wrath of people left to starve in a California rich with food destroyed because harvesting isn’t profitable enough. There is foreshadowing of a rebellion by the people against this cruel system. Personification is used by the author in his depiction of the pigs "screaming."

"Take a man, he can get worried an’ worried, an’ it eats out his liver, an’ purty soon he’ll jus’ lay down and die with his heart et out. But if you can take an’ make ‘im mad, why, he’ll be awright."

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 26. After riling up Pa Joad by criticizing him out for having no job and threatening him with a stick, Ma Joad admits that there is method in her madness. She tells her son Tom that if a man gives in to worry he is defeated, but rouse him to anger and he’ll be fine.

Tom looked down at the preacher. The light crossed the heavy man’s legs and the white new pick handle. Tom leaped silently. He wrenched the club free. The first time he knew he had missed and struck a shoulder, but the second time his crushing blow found the head, and as the heavy man sank down, three more blows found his head.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 26. An angry Tom Joad delivers retribution to the police officer who has murdered Jim Casy. He rains five blows on the officer, killing him. While morally wrong, Tom’s act is different to the drunken killing of the man at a dance, which earned him four years in prison. In this case he is standing up for migrants’ rights and fighting for a righteous cause greater than himself. He is taking on the role of Casy.

And in the little towns pity for the sodden men changed to anger, and anger at the hungry people changed to fear of them. Then sheriffs swore in deputies in droves, and orders were rushed for rifles, for tear gas, for ammunition.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 29. Initially people in the towns are sympathetic to the suffering of the migrant families when California floods. But that soon changes and turns to fear and anger. Expecting trouble, extra deputies are appointed and guns ordered to protect the towns from the threat of hungry migrants.

The women stood silently and watched. And where a number of men gathered together, the fear went from their faces, and anger took its place. And the women sighed with relief, for they knew it was all right – the break had not come; and the break would never come as long as fear could turn to wrath.
Tiny points of grass came through the earth, and in a few days the hills were pale green with the beginning year.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 29. In the face of great hardship and suffering, the migrant families show their resilience and strength. The women watch the faces of their men looking for signs of fear, but when the men come together that fear turns to anger. This gives the women hope that their men haven’t broken and they will survive. The men are looked to for the strength and will to go on. Although in the case of the Joads this gender role has turned a full 180 degrees, with Ma Joad her family’s tower of strength.

"Go down an’ tell ’em. Go down in the street an’ rot an’ tell ’em that way. That’s the way you can talk. Don’ even know if you was a boy or a girl. Ain’t gonna find out. Go on down now, an’ lay in the street. Maybe they’ll know then."

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 30. Uncle John says this as he places Rose of Sharon’s stillborn baby in a box and sends it floating away in the stream. In doing so, he wishes that the body will be a message and a protest to the townspeople about the inhuman conditions of people in the migrant camps. His hope is that it will shock and stir people’s humanity, provoke their anger and bring about change.
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