Coyote

The coyote is a creature of the margins in The Grapes of Wrath, appearing in the night sounds and the wild spaces that surround the migrant camps. It is never seen directly by the Joads, but its presence is felt as a voice from the darkness, a reminder of the untamed and the lonely that exists just beyond the fragile boundaries of human shelter.

Sound and Presence in the Night

The coyote first enters the narrative as a sound in the dark. When Jim Casy, alone under a tree after his crisis of faith, awakens from a deep sleep, he hears a coyote squawking nearby. This moment comes just after he has concluded that there is no sin and no virtue, only the things people do. The coyote's call is the only sound in the night, a raw, unadorned noise that seems to confirm the preacher's new, stripped-down understanding of the world. Later, in the migrant camps, the coyote's voice is part of the ambient night. After the singing and the stories, when the people have gone to their beds, the coyotes gabbled in the distance, their calls mixing with the sound of owls coasting overhead and the waddling of skunks through the camp. The coyote is thus a fixture of the outdoor world the migrants inhabit, a sound that belongs to the empty land rather than to the crowded, temporary communities.

The Coyote as a Figure of Loneliness and Pursuit

Muley Graves, the stubborn tenant who refuses to leave his land, is described as creeping around like a coyote. Jim Casy observes that Muley's solitary, furtive existence is bound to make him crazy, and that he will likely kill somebody and be run down with dogs. The comparison links the coyote not just to wildness but to a specific kind of hunted, desperate loneliness. Muley himself uses the coyote as a measure of his own transformation. He tells Tom Joad that he used to be mean like a wolf, but now he is mean like a weasel, because he is no longer a hunter but the hunted. The coyote, in this context, is the animal that is always pursued, always on the edge, surviving by cunning and stealth rather than strength. This mirrors the condition of the migrant people themselves, who are constantly being moved on, their camps burned, their presence unwanted.

The Coyote and the Cycle of Pursuit

The coyote's howl is also a sound that marks the passage of time and the persistence of the wild. In the Hooverville, after the deputies have come and gone, the coyotes gabbled in the distance, a sound that is both a part of the night and a signal that the human drama is small against the larger, indifferent landscape. The coyote does not participate in the story's events; it is a background presence, a voice from the darkness that underscores the isolation and the precariousness of the migrants' existence. It is the sound of the land itself, untamed and unclaimed, a reminder that the world the Joads are traveling through is not a place of settled homes but of constant movement and threat.