My theme is how humanity’s purpose should be to help one another in an upwardly manner. To help one another in times of need. To give to the collective. This is demonstrated by how Tom develops throughout the story. In the beginning of the book, Tom basically lives for the present movement. When the family loses the farm, as many others do, they go and seek a new life in California, and he just seems to be in each individual moment. In chapter 6, Tom says “By God, you’re right! I ain’t got a thing in the worl’ to win, no matter how it comes out.” This essentially translates to he has nothing to live for in the long run, as things continue to get worse for the Joad family. As the book progresses, when the Joad family leaves their past home, they have to …show more content…
This causes the family morale to fall significantly, as the family slowly runs out of money, and the hierarchy in the family starts dissolve. For example, in chapter 16, the grandfather dies. In his later years, he was losing his power in the decisions that the family were making. He was still regarded as the leader and patriarch of the Joad family, and then a few chapters later, grandma also dies, and Noah leaves them. This furthered the family’s disintegration.
This relates back to the Joads because even though the dust storms couldn’t have been stopped, they could have been in a better financial standing to combat the effects of the dust storms. As the Joads move west to California, they find solace in the fact that there is some work available. However, it is nowhere near the capacity that they would like. For example, the family works odd jobs for large farms, because smaller farms have increasingly failed due to bankruptcy, they are unable to compete with the big farms, or they are simply unable to afford to water and feed the plants as much as they need to survive. The work that the Joans do get is also lacking any basic benefits such as