The Grapes of Wrath Isolation Quotes

The questions of the driver had the tone of a subtle examination. He seemed to spread nets, to set traps, with his questions.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 2. The truck driver asks persistent question of Tom – about his new shoes, if is he going far, and if he has been doing a job. Tom is reluctant to share too much information with the driver. This passage speaks to the theme of the isolation of Tom Joad. Tom is an ex-con who has just been released from prison, having served time for killing a man in a fight, and is trying to adjust to the outside world.

"Now don’t get sore. I just like to notice things. Makes the time pass."
"I’ll tell you anything. Name’s Joad, Tom Joad. Old man is ol’ Tom Joad." His eyes rested broodingly on the driver.
"Don’t get sore. I didn’t mean nothin’."
"I don’t mean nothin’ neither," said Joad. "I’m just tryin’ to get along without shovin’ nobody around."

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 2. Tom Joad, who is just released from prison, is irritated at the truck driver’s constant questions about him. Tom being an honest person discloses who he is and who is father is and says that he is just trying to get along without getting into trouble. The driver explains that he means no harm, but merely wants to chat to make the time pass. This chapter shows how lonely and isolated both characters feel. Tom is a private person and reacts defensively to the driver’s interrogation.

"I ain’t a nosy guy."
"The hell you ain’t," said Joad. "That big old nose of yours been stickin’ out eight miles ahead of your face. You had that big nose goin’ over me like a sheep in a vegetable patch."

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 2. Tom Joad is frustrated and annoyed at what he sees as the truck driver’s nosiness. He uses a simile to compare the driver’s big nose going all over him to a sheep in a vegetable patch. Freshly paroled Tom, affected by the isolation of prison, is touchy about a stranger’s repeated attempts to elicit information about him.

As the embankment grew steeper and steeper, the more frantic were the efforts of the land turtle. Pushing hind legs strained and slipped, boosting the shell along, and the horny head protruded as far as the neck could stretch. Little by little, the shell slid up the embankment until at last a parapet cut straight across its line of march, the shoulder of the road, a concrete wall four inches high. As though they worked independently the hind legs pushed the shell against the wall. The head upraised and peered over the wall to the broad smooth plain of cement. Now the hands, braced on top of the wall, strained and lifted, and the shell came slowly up and rested its front end on the wall.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 3. A land turtle slowly climbs up a steep embankment to get to the highway. The turtle represents isolation and struggle. It is a metaphor for and symbolizes the Joad family and other migrant families searching for a way out of their poverty and homelessness. The turtle’s journey demonstrates persistence in the face of adversity, hope in the face of hopelessness.

"I was a preacher," said the man seriously. "Reverend Jim Casy – was a Burning Busher. Used to howl out the name of Jesus to glory. And used to get an irrigation ditch so squirmin’ full of repented sinners half of ’em like to drowned. But not no more," he sighed. "Jus Jim Casy now. Ain’t got the call no more. Got a lot of sinful idears – but they seem kinda sensible."

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 4. Jim Casy, once a follower of the Burning Bush sect, a breakaway group from the Methodists, has lost his faith. The theme of isolation is presented here, as the reformed evangelist abandons organized religion and rejects his former calling. He says that he is just plain Jim Casy now. Admitting to flipping his ideological thinking, he is now considering some "sinful" ideas that appear "sensible" to him. He is undergoing a spiritual crisis.

"Says he come back where they got a few conveniences an’ he eats regular. He says it makes him feel lonesome out there in the open havin’ to think what to do next. So he stole a car an’ come back."

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 4. Tom Joad tells Casy about a released prisoner who steals a car to get back into prison, because conditions are worse at his father’s place – no electic light, shower baths, books and bad food. To add to the irony, the man also finds freedom more lonely than prison life.

"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.

Joad settled himself on the clean sand. "I ain’t gonna sleep in no cave," he said. "I’m gonna sleep right here." He rolled his coat and put it under his head. Muley pulled at the covering brush and crawled into his cave. "I like it in here," he called. "I feel like nobody can come at me."
…"I ain’t sleepin," said Casy. "I got too much to puzzle with." He drew up his feet and clasped his legs. He threw back his head and looked at the sharp stars. Joad yawned and brought one hand back under his head. They were silent, and gradually the skittering life of the ground, of holes and burrows, of the brush, began again; the gophers moved, and the rabbits crept to green things, the mice scampered over clods, and the winged hunters moved soundlessly overhead.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 6. In the chapter’s last lines, Tom Joad, Muley Graves and Jim Casy hide from a police car to avoid being arrested for trespassing. Ironically this is on the property that the Joad family had occupied for generations. Tom shows his instinct to fight and resist the powers that be by refusing to hide in a cave with Muley. The thinker of the trio Casy opts for the open air and stares at the stars searching for inspiration on what direction he should take next with his life.

"Never wanted to get close to folks. Wanted to be off alone. I never seen a kid that wasn’t crazy about him. He’d come to our house in the night sometimes, an’ we knowed he’d come ’cause jus’ as sure as he come there’d be a pack a gum in the bed right beside ever’ one of us. We thought he was Jesus Christ Awmighty."

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 8. Uncle John cuts a sad and lonely figure in the novel. But he is also big-hearted, as Tom Joad explains to Jim Casy. Uncle John carries around the guilt of ignoring his pregnant wife’s complaint of a stomach ache and not calling a doctor. Since her death from a burst appendix, Uncle John has been giving things to people to make up, like bringing sweets to the kids.

"Seems like Jesus got all messed up with troubles, and He couldn’t figure nothin’ out, an’ He got to feelin’ what the hell good is it all, an’ what’s the use fightin’ an’ figurin’. Got tired, got good an’ tired, an’ His sperit all wore out. Jus’ about come to the conclusion, the hell with it. An’ so He went off into the wilderness."

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 8. Jim Casy is often considered a Christ-like figure in <em>The Grapes of Wrath</em>, even sharing the same initials as Jesus. Here he talks about Jesus being full of troubles and having to go off into the wilderness to think about things. Casy himself has been through a similar soul searching.

"I ain’t sayin’ I’m like Jesus," the preacher went on. "But I got tired like Him, an’ I got mixed up like Him, an’ I went into the wilderness like Him, without no campin’ stuff…Sometimes I’d pray like I always done. On’y I couldn’ figure what I was prayin’ to or for. There was the hills, an’ there was me, an’ we wasn’t separate no more. We was one thing. An’ that one thing was holy."

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 8. Jim Casy is asked by Granma Joad to say grace before they have family breakfast. It is ironic that the former preacher uses the occasion for some deep spiritual qestioning. Casy, like Jesus, tells how he has struggled with temptation and his spirituality, and had to take off into the wilderness to learn what was holy. As he prayed alone among the hills he discovered that they weren’t separate any more, the universe and all people were united – by holiness. This is an example of Emerson’s "Over-Soul," the oneness between God, man and nature.

"I’ll go anyways," he said. "Somepin’s happening. I went up an’ I looked, an’ the houses is all empty, an’ the land is empty, an’ this whole country is empty."

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 10. Casy says that since all the people in the Dust Bowl are leaving their houses, the fields and the countyside, he is going with them. He sees his life being with them, rather than being on his own, and believes that he may find happiness amongst them. This echoes the theme of community, and that no man is an island.

Uncle John sat uneasily, his lonely haunted eyes were not at ease, and his thin strong body was not relaxed. Nearly all the time the barrier of loneliness cut Uncle John off from people and from appetites. He ate little, drank nothing, and was celibate. But underneath, his appetites swelled into pressures until the broke through. Then he would eat some food until he was sick; or he would drink jake whiskey until he was a shaken paralytic with red wet eyes; or he would raven with lust for some whore in Sallisaw…But when one of his appetites was sated, he was sad and ashamed and lonely again. He hid from people, and by gifts tried to make up to all people for himself.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 10. Uncle John comes across as a lonely and tortured man, who regularly fills the void in his life by overeating, overdrinking and having sex with whores. He eats until he is sick, drinks until he is drunk, and has loveless sex with whores to sedate himself.

One man, one family driven from the land; this rusty car creaking along the highway to the west. I lost my land, a single tractor took my land. I am alone and bewildered. And in the night one family camps in a ditch and another family pulls in and the tents come out. The two men squat on their hams and the women and children listen. Here is the node, you who hate change and fear revolution. Keep these two squatting men apart; make them hate, fear, suspect each other. Here is the anlarge of the thing you fear. This is the zygote. For here "I lost my land" is changed; a cell is split and from its splitting grows the thing you hate – "We lost our land." The danger is here, for two men are not as lonely and perplexed as one.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 14. Here Steinbeck speaks to the themes of isolation and unity. One family driven off the land feels isolated and confused. But when they meet another migrant family on the highway who suffer a similar fate, they form a community of shared experience and common humanity. There is a transition from "I" to "we." This is the very thing that those in power hate and fear, says Steinbeck. He believes that the key to fighting injustice and effecting change is for the migrants to unite as a community.

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."

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 14. Steinbeck speaks here about the power of "we" in his strong warning message to the powers that be. He warns the banks and landowners of a revolution of the dispossessed as he positions Marx and Lenin alongside Jefferson and Paine. The same powers could save themselves if they understood that the dispossessed were no longer isolated individuals but were uniting together in common cause. But Steinbeck believes that their wealth wealth has placed them in their own bubble and isolated them and cut them off from the people.

"Fella can’t starve beside a nice river…I can’t he’p it. I can’t leave this here water…You know how the folks are nice to me. But they don’t really care for me."

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 18. Noah Joad abruptly announces to his brother Tom that he is parting company with the family. He asks his brother to tell Ma and says that he will survive by fishing. Noah doesn’t fit in and feels that the others don’t care for him. His American dream has now fallen apart, he is just intent on survival.

"You ain’t goin’. We’re a-takin’ you. Al, you back the truck against the door. Now, I got it figgered out. We’ll put one mattress on the bottom, an’ then Tom gets quick there, an’ we take another mattress an’ sort of fold it so it makes a cave, an’ he’s in the cave; and then we sort of wall it in. He can breathe out the end, ya see. Don’t argue. That’s what we’ll do."

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 26. Ma Joad takes command of the family, coming up with a plan to keep everyone together, despite Tom being hunted for killing a policeman. That night Tom goes into isolation, hiding between two matresses in the truck as they drive north from the Hooper Ranch. Ma is adament that the family stays as one unit, because there is strength in unity.

"I been thinkin’ what he said, an’ I can remember – all of it. Says one time he went out in the wilderness to find his own soul, an’ he foun’ he didn’t have no soul that was his’n. Says he foun’ he jus’ got a little piece of a great big soul. 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 listenin’. But I know now a fella ain’t no good alone."

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 28. Tom Joad is talking to Ma in the darkness of his cave during his self-enforce exile there to evade the law. He speaks of Jim Casy’s revelation when he went into the wilderness to discover his own soul. What he learned was that the answer is not in the wilderness, but in uniting with all other souls. In Casy’s religion we are all part of the one great soul, a universal spirit. Tom is about to leave his wilderness and join with the other migrant worker souls in the fight for equality and justice.

Tom laughed uneasily, "Well, maybe like Casy says, a fella ain’t got a soul of his own, but on’y a piece of a big one – an’ then – "
"Then what, Tom?"
"Then it don’ matter. Then I’ll be aroun’ in the dark. I’ll be ever’where – wherever you look. Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. If Casy knowed, why, 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. See? God, I’m talkin’ like Casy. Comes of thinkin’ about him so much. Seems like I can see him sometimes."

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 28. As Tom Joad prepares to leave his family, he takes time to bid goodbye to his mother, delivering the novel’s most famous speech. From the dark isolation of his cave, he reveals how he has seen the light and humanity of Casy’s "one soul" philosophy. In his final appearance of the novel, he pledges to devote his life to fighting for justice for poor people oppressed by a corrupt system. His message is one that offers hope and leadership to hungry migrant workers searching for a just deal. Fully committed to Casy’s idea that we are all part of the one community of humanity, Tom has become Casy. He even admits that he speaks like him. And like Casy also, Tom went into a wilderness of his own, the cave, and discovered his true calling.
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