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No end of the line No Don't step on me

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Not again Oh you're just a student Thank the lord

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I thought you were a winemaker ready to stop me

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I'm known as the wrathful grape don't know why i'm

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pretty chill but i hate it when people call me

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angry Whoops Sorry Maybe they call me that because i'm

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an expert on John steinbeck's 19:39 novel The grapes of

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wrath Yeah yeah Yuck it up Today i'll be focusing

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on the ending of the grapes of wrath Fair warning

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This thing is dense maybe even denser than a triple

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layer brownie sundae Yeah so buckle in shmoop rooney's Because

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it's time to finish this journey once and for all

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Before we can get into things let's quickly refresh ourselves

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on the ending If you remember correctly tom's on the

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run from the law after killing the policeman that murdered

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jim casey This forces the joad family to leave the

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relative comfort of the peach farm and seek out work

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elsewhere They hide tom in a cave for a while

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giving him food when they can Nice case the local

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soon catch wind of this fugitive situation however forcing the

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jobs to say goodbye to tom the family ends up

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picking cotton at a plantation and living in an old

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abandoned boxcar It's Pretty nice ous faras old abandoned box

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cars go now Remember rose of sharon is pregnant and

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her husband connie bailed out A few towns backs well

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rose starts giving birth at the same time that a

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huge rainstorm lets loose over the boxcar Sadly rose's baby

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is stillborn it's devastating news Meanwhile the water keeps rising

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Joe's try a variety of tricks to keep the water

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from flooding their box car but they ultimately prove on

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success Eventually the flooding gets so bad that jobs are

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forced to leave their makeshift home Yeah it's hard to

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say goodbye So off they go in search of some

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place dry They come across a barn which is perfect

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for their purposes Inside they find a boy and his

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father The father is in rough shape because he's been

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given all of his food to his son instead of

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eating it himself That's When something unexpected happened rose asks

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everyone to leave the bar and lets the man drink

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her breast milk which is being produced because of the

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pregnancy The scene has left More or less open ended

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We don't know what happens to the man or the

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joad family or poor young tom This is what we

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in the biz call an ambiguous ending folks So what

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can we learn from this open ended final scene First

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remember that the grapes of wrath is a realist novel

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which means that it's supposed to depict life as it

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is rather than as we'd like it to be After

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all ria life rarely works out like it does in

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the movies In fact it never does Sometimes things go

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well sometimes they go bad but never do they just

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up and stop in that way it's fitting that the

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grapes of wrath doesn't end with some perfect resolution because

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that's what life's like now that that's out of the

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way let's start analyzing first the elephant in the room

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The novel ends with rose breast feeding an adult man

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It's certainly a striking visual and not one we're going

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to depict here for What does it mean Well for

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rose there's Probably something comforting about it despite the weirdness

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of the situation After all she just lost her child

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And that child is the reason she's able to breastfeed

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But now despite the trudge guests and because of it

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she has the opportunity to save a life it's a

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powerful gesture one that mirror's other sacrifices made by characters

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in the novel like when the jobs help out the

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wilsons or when casey helps organize striking workers or when

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tom let's rose have his last piece of halloween candy

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Or did we imagine that one Either way rose of

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sharon shows us the ultimate example of sacrifice by feeding

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the starving man at the end of the novel Even

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if the man ends up kicking the bucket It's still

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mighty meaningful that rose of sharon tried to help him

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To better understand this it might be useful to take

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a look at the symbols we've encountered along the way

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The most ever present symbol and the grapes of wrath

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is the road roads It turns out our heavy symbolic

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implications in fiction whether you're talking about on the road

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or the road In this case our road de jour

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is route sixty six which cut straight across the united

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states Route sixty six is a notable symbol in american

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society on its own it's inspired everything from songs to

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movies in the grapes of wrath route sixty six is

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a lifeline for the jobs and the other families like

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them escaping the dust bowl Route sixty six is even

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described as the mother road the road of flight it's

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also significant that route sixty six never really intersects with

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other major roads It goes in two directions on lee

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on route sixty six you can either keep moving forward

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in search of opportunity or you could turn around and

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head back to the place you've always known which doesn't

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happen to be an option for the jobs The novel

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also features more insects than you could shake a fly

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swatter at In our lesson on the desk paul we

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talked about how it caused a horde of insects to

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bear down on the midwest These buggers literally block the

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sun from shining theories which makes us think about the

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book of exodus in the bible in which god via

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moses unload a load of course is upon egypt one

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of which is a plague of locusts thiss suggests that

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the dust bowl was so terrifying that it felt like

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a curse from god on the other hand one of

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the early chapters features tom crushing the hard skull like

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head of a grass hopper So maybe these insect lloyd's

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aren't so tough after all Well now that you have

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a diagnosable case of the heebie jeebies it's time to

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turn to a much less creepy symbol music These were

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the days before spotify and itunes If you wanted music

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there weren't many places to get it You need a

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banjo or harmonica or a car huh Weird as it

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sounds the credit used car that jodi's drive makes all

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sorts of crazy noises So many noises in fact that

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it starts to sound like music Check out this bit

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for example Deep stuff on another weird note Tom joad

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here's More music in prison than he does anywhere else

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It's hard to pinpoint what exactly Steinbeck's trying to get

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across with all this music imagery But all we know

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is that it's totally ominous Next on the list are

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animals of many shapes and sizes We have the poor

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hapless turtle who tom rescues as if trying to cross

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the road That moment makes us think of the jobs

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own determination in the face of adversity There's a similar

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thing going down with the jobs former house who in

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the time since the family was forced out of the

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home has become legit Barrel me out like they're family

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feline The jobs have been forced out of the comfort

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of civilization and forced to take a walk on the

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wild side Then of course there's the family dog The

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poor guy is hit by a car early on in

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the trip while the family is pumping gas This is

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a sad hint of the struggles still to come for

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the job And now it's color time y'all three colors

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to be specific red gray and yellow we watched the

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yellowing dusty Afternoon light fall across the oklahoma countryside Elsewhere

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the book describes the country as both red and gray

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which makes us think of the blood sweat and tears

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that have been poured into okey country by local farmers

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Speaking up farming is a big symbol in and of

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itself it's Pretty miraculous When you stop and think about

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it you stick a little pebble in the ground and

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then a couple of months later you got like an

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avocado or something Well the grapes of wrath takes place

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during the transition between the traditional old school methods of

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farming and the modern machine driven marketplace This is obviously

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horrendous for the farmers whose livelihoods are being destroyed by

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buckets of brainless bolts Next up blood Don't worry no

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vampires here Some okie farmers believe that rich landowners who

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plant cotton in the state are second the blood out

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of the land that is red blood Of course call

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back This makes blood represent vitality and life to things

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that are in short supply round these parts Of course

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there's also plenty of literal blood in the novel After

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all the novel's title is taken from the battle hymn

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of the republic where it's used as a direct reference

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to blood and asked line blood they look the same

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Still it doesn't take a phd to deduce that this

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sort of blood represents death pain and all that awful

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nastiness Last and certainly not least is the west broad

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topic home in american society The west has always represented

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freedom and new opportunities There's lewis and clark the gold

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rush and it lets throw to park in there for

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good measure He's a quality california anyway grapes complicates this

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by showing us the misery and desperation that phil california's

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fertile hills So check out this quote on ly the

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unbalanced sky showed the approach of dog no horizon to

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the west and aligned to the east This both hints

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at the sense of freedom and unknown associate it with

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the west and gives us a sense that this feeling

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might be uneasy on some level And now friends were

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left with the biggest question of all What in the

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name of steinbeck does this all mean Well the symbols

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we've studied helped emphasize many of the themes found in

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the novels ending After all many of those symbols reflect

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the hardships And adversities faced by the jobs So does

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the ending which is a double edged sword in that

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regard On one hand it's just another hardship The joes

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are once again forced from a place of comfort and

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into the wild unknown but it's also uplifting because despite

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the fact that rosa sharon just lost her child she's

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choosing to take that tragedy which in this case is

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represented by a breast milk strangers have been sound and

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use it to save someone else who's experiencing hardship as

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well Ultimately this bittersweet feeling defines the ending of the

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grapes of wrath it's like a sour grape there is

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pain and suffering Yeah but amid that pain and suffering

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is humanity and has a great i can say that

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you humans could be a lot better people than you

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think especially when the going gets tough But like all

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great travelogues the grapes of wrath is about the journey

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not the destination After all there is no destination The

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jobs never reached their promised land at least not yet

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And me Well i'm pretty content where i'm at so

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long as no one makers move into the neighborhood i

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think i'll be a okay but let me tell you

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something But you ever try to smush me my friends

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and my family Then we will find out first hand 00:10:18.842 --> [endTime] why they call me the great

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