Grapes of Wrath pgs. 373 - 455

The Joads have been in the government for over a month now. Their supplies and food are starting to run low, and there isn't much work. Ma Joad convinces the family to leave the camp. On their way out of the camp, they get a flat tire. While they're fixing it, a man drives up and offers the whole family a ob picking peaches. Desperate for food, they accept. They later learn they'll only get five cents an hour and that night their total earnings combined is one dollar. The family spends it all on food and still goes hungry that night. Afterwards, Tom goes out looking for girls. He's turned away by the guards at the gate of the orchard field when he tries to come back because men have been on strike and they think he's part of it. He goes wandering and finds a tent with Jim Casey in it. He tells them that the men are on strike because the man that hired them cut the wages to two and a half cents and that will happen to Tom's family tomorrow. Some police come by and start calling Jim a communist for leading the strike. He jumps on the policeman but the po-po clubs Jim in the head and kills him. Tom, in rage, takes the club and kills the policeman. He goes back to the orchard and gets the family to leave. They find work elsewhere picking cotton. Workers without cotton bags are forced to buy them on credit.

The Joads are given a boxcar to live in but they share it with another family, the Wainwrights.

Ruthie gets some candy and brags that her brother killed two people. Ma runs to the woods where Tom is hiding to tell him people know about him. She suggests that he leaves but he decides to stay. Al and Agnes Wainwright plan to be married. They go out to pick the next day. There are so many workers that the whole field is finished by noon. They glumly go back to the boxcar when it starts to do what it hasn't done in months and months. Rain.

The rain continues to fall and Rose goes into labor. The truck is flooded and some men try to make a make-shift dam. A tree falls and destroys it though. They seek higher ground and find a barn. Inside it, there's a small boy and a dying man. The man has been giving all the food to the boy for the past six days. His body can't digest hard food. Rose knows what she has to do and she breast-feeds the man. The last sentence of the book says she she smiled.

This was a great, historical book that showed a families difficult journey. The one thing I didn't like was how abruptly it ended. She just breast-feeds the man and it ends. I need a little closure.