ShmoopTube

Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.

Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos


Religion Videos 7 videos

Reading the Psalms
293 Views

Shmoop is our shepherd.

The Origin Story
563 Views

Every culture has some idea about where we all came from. Surprisingly, very few of them hypothesize that we are all simply figments of Lady Gagaâ€...

Moby-Dick (Spanish)
268 Views

Moby-Dick - una ballena extraña. Nuestro amigo capitán Ahab la había perseguido para años, pero no es el mejor lider en el mundo. Piensas que p...

See All

The Grapes of Wrath Summary 35356 Views


Share It!


Description:

No, not the sour grapes of questionable freshness that gave you weird stomach rumblings before your last soccer game; we're talking about Steinbeck's classic novel about the Depression. So...not actually a happier topic. Sorry!

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:04

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

00:10

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

00:16

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

00:20

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

00:27

shopping.

00:29

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

00:33

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

00:37

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

00:42

a nice tan.

00:44

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

00:48

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

00:53

Reverend Casey.

00:54

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

00:59

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

01:02

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

01:08

and we were on our way.

01:09

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

01:14

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

01:17

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

01:21

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

01:26

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

01:31

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

01:35

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

01:40

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

01:42

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

01:49

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

01:53

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

01:59

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

02:04

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

02:07

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

02:12

a contract, and the police started shooting at him.

02:14

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

02:19

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

02:23

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

02:28

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

02:33

move.

02:33

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

02:37

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

02:42

in an anti-union scuffle.

02:44

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

02:50

that time.

02:51

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

02:55

it, to avoid Jail 2.0.

02:58

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

03:03

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

03:08

to put me in a comedy next time!

Related Videos

Utopias Becoming Dystopias
29768 Views

This video defines utopias and dystopias, and investigates how a utopia might become a dystopia. Can a seemingly perfect world actually be a dystop...

Shakespeare on Love
17380 Views

We may all be fools when it comes to love, but thankfully none of us will accidentally switch places with our twin brother and fall in love with ou...

The Importance of Being Earnest Summary
123040 Views

They say that honesty is the best policy, but Jack lies about his identity and still gets the girl. Does that mean we should all lie to get what we...

The Giver Summary
105893 Views

Ever wish you could remember everything that you ever studied? How about everything that everyone has ever studied? Yeah, pretty sure our brains ju...

Invisible Man (Ellison)
1818 Views

Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is an American classic. Hope you're not expecting any exciting shower scenes though. It's not that kind of book.