Barstow

Barstow, a small desert town in California, occupies a pivotal position in the Joad family's westward journey. It is the last significant settlement before the family must cross the Mojave Desert, and it is here that the most harrowing deception of the journey unfolds. The town is first mentioned in the novel's panoramic description of Highway 66, the "mother road" of flight, which passes through Barstow after crossing the "terrible desert" and before winding through the final mountains into the "beautiful valley" of California. For the Joads, Barstow represents the threshold of their final ordeal, a place where the physical and emotional costs of the migration reach a terrible climax.

The Final Desert Crossing

After the agricultural inspection stop near Daggett, Tom Joad drives the overloaded Hudson truck through the night toward Barstow. The family is exhausted and desperate, having just deceived the inspectors by claiming Granma is merely sick when she is, in fact, already dead. Tom increases speed to reach Barstow, which is only eight miles away, as the officer had directed them to find a doctor there. When they arrive in the little town, Tom stops the truck and walks around it, but Ma insists they cannot stop. She tells him Granma is "awright" and that they must "get acrost" the desert. Tom is confused by her behavior, noting to Al and Pa that Ma is "flighty as a dog with a flea in his ear" and that he "can't figger her out." Despite his unease, he follows her orders, filling the gas tank and radiator at an all-night station before Al takes the wheel and they drive on into the darkness, leaving Barstow behind.

Ma's Deception and the Burden of Survival

Barstow is the site where Ma Joad's immense strength and strategic ruthlessness are most starkly revealed. It is only after the family has crossed the desert and reached the top of Tehachapi Pass, looking down on the San Joaquin Valley, that Ma finally reveals the truth: Granma died the night before, during the agricultural inspection stop. Ma confesses that she told Granma, as she was dying, that the family had to get across the desert and that there were "young ones" and Rose of Sharon's baby to consider. She feared that if they stopped for the inspection, they would not be allowed to cross. The family is stunned by her strength, with Tom exclaiming, "Jesus Christ! You layin' there with her all night long!" Ma's act of lying beside her dead mother-in-law for an entire night, enduring the desert heat and the constant movement of the truck, is a profound testament to her will to keep the family intact. Barstow, therefore, is not just a place on a map but the psychological breaking point where Ma chose the survival of the living over the rites of the dead.

Narrative Role and Significance

Barstow functions as a critical narrative fulcrum in the novel's structure. It is the last named town before the desert, a place of transition from the known hardships of the road to the unknown terrors of the Mojave. The novel's intercalary chapter on Highway 66 establishes Barstow as a landmark on the migrant trail, a place where the desert begins in earnest. For the Joads, the brief stop in Barstow is not a moment of rest but a frantic, deceptive pause that enables their final push. The town itself is almost invisible in the narrative—a gas station, a dark street—yet it is the stage for Ma's most heroic and terrible act. The journey through Barstow and across the desert becomes a symbolic death and rebirth for the family, with Granma's corpse serving as a grim passenger that must be smuggled into the Promised Land. The town thus embodies the cruel calculus of the migrant experience: the necessity of sacrifice and the suppression of grief in the relentless drive to survive.