ShmoopTube

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Grapes of Wrath, a la Shmoop. Ah, Oklahoma...where the wind comes sweepin’

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down the plain… blowing away just about every job opportunity you can imagine.

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Sound depressing? Well, yeah…it's the Great Depression…

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You’d think that getting out of prison would be a happy occasion, full of cake and clothes

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shopping.

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Mine was a bummer, though. There wasn't even a surprise party, because my folks got kicked

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off their land to make room for job-eliminating tractors.

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I found my peeps at my uncle’s house, planning a West coast road trip to get jobs, and maybe

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a nice tan.

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Everybody was there: Ma and Pa and Uncle John, and Grandma and Grandpa, and my little sister

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and my pregnant sister, and my three brothers and one brother-in-law, and my best buddy,

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Reverend Casey.

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Apparently this was gonna be one crowded car ride to California. Good thing we stocked

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up on barf bags. After some bonding and pig-slaughtering, everybody

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piled into the Joad-mobile. Grandpa didn’t want to leave, but Ma slipped him a Mickey,

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and we were on our way.

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Doping Grandpa might not have been the best idea, because he sort of… died afterwards.

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On the bright side, I finally scored the window seat!

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Route 66 was a real drag. If you weren’t out desperately looking for work, you were

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probably getting the runaround from a cheap boss, a greedy mechanic, or a scary policeman.

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Plus, folks were telling us that California wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

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And it didn’t help that we had to pay just to rough it on the side of the road.

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Some smart guy cop forced us to leave one campground because we were Okies, and I'm

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pretty sure he didn't mean that we were “okey dokey.”

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The worst part, though, was when Ma dropped the bomb that Grandma had been dead for days.

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Ma hadn't told us, because she thought we'd get pulled over. So basically… we were driving

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around with a corpse in the car. Thanks, Mom. Oh, it gets worse.  One worker told us that

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the “Move to Cali” campaign was just a ruse to stuff the state with cheap labor.

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Fight the authorities, and you'd end up blacklisted or dead.

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For example: some poor shmuck in our camp tried to stand up for himself and ask for

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a contract, and the police started shooting at him.

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During the scuffle I tripped a trigger-happy cop, which is probably a violation of my parole,

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and good old Casey took the blame to save his fellow man. What a guy!

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So all in all, things weren’t exactly going according to plan. By the time the angry,

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drunken mob arrived to trash the camp, I was definitely having second thoughts about this

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move.

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Too bad I couldn’t just skip town like Rose of Sharon's baby-daddy.

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Luckily, I found Reverend Casey again, and I was really stoked! Aaaaand then he was killed

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in an anti-union scuffle.

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I lost my head a little after that, and axed a guy. Literally. Definitely a parole violation

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that time.

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After the drama it was back to the daily grind, only this time I had to be stealthy about

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it, to avoid Jail 2.0.

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Rose of Sharon lost her baby, which was another tearjerker, but she did find a second calling:

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breast-feeding starving men. Man, what a downer. Somebody tell Steinbeck

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to put me in a comedy next time!

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