Family decides to leave

The Joad family's decision to leave their Oklahoma farm is the novel's foundational event, the moment that transforms a rooted tenant family into a migrant unit on the road to California. Driven by the tractor eviction, the Dust Bowl's destruction, and the collapse of the sharecropping system, the family gathers at Uncle John's place, sells their possessions, slaughters their pigs, and loads their Hudson Super-Six truck for the westward journey. This decision, made collectively in a family council and propelled by Ma Joad's quiet authority, sets in motion the novel's central narrative of displacement, loss, and the search for a new home.

Causes and Background

The decision to leave was forced by a convergence of environmental and economic catastrophes. The Dust Bowl had ruined the corn crop, and the land itself was dying under the sun and wind. More decisively, the tractor had come. The owner men, representing the bank and the Shawnee Lan' an' Cattle Company, had told the tenants they had to get off the land. A tractor driver, Willy Feeley, had already smashed the Joad house, pushing it off its foundations and crushing a corner. The family's well was filled in, their tools were gone, and the cotton was growing in the dooryard where children had once played. When Tom Joad returned from McAlester, he found the house empty and the land cultivated by strangers. The family had already moved to Uncle John's place, where they were chopping cotton for fifty cents a clean acre, trying to gather money to buy a car and "shove on west where it's easy livin'." The pressure was relentless: the land was no longer theirs, and staying meant starvation.

The Family Council and the Decision

The decision to go was not made by one person but by the entire family, gathered in a congress near the truck. Pa Joad, squatting in the dust with a stick to draw with, reported that they had been "skinned" on the sale of their belongings, getting only eighteen dollars for everything. The total money they had was a hundred and fifty-four dollars. Al Joad, the family's automobile expert, reported on the truck they had bought, a Hudson Super-Six sedan with the top cut off and a truck bed fitted on. He assured them it was a good buy, though the tires were worn. The family counted its members: Grampa and Granma, Pa and Ma, Uncle John, Noah, Tom, Al, Rose of Sharon and Connie, Ruthie and Winfield, and the dogs. When Tom proposed that the preacher Jim Casy come along, Ma Joad made her stand. "It ain't kin we? It's will we?" she said firmly. "As far as 'kin,' we can't do nothin', not go to California or nothin'; but as far as 'will,' why, we'll do what we will." Her words settled the matter. The family would go, and Casy would go with them.

The Rush to Depart

Once the decision was made, a fever of activity seized the family. The usual plan had been to slaughter the pigs the next day, salt the meat, and leave the day after. But the pressure was too great. Uncle John, his own guilt and restlessness driving him, broke the tension: "What we hangin' aroun' for? I want to get shut of this. Now we're goin', why don't we go?" The revulsion spread to the rest. Pa agreed: "They say it's two thousan' miles. That's a hell of a long ways. We oughta go." In the middle of the night, they slaughtered the two shoats, scalded and scraped them, and Ma salted the meat into kegs. The men loaded the truck with tools, clothes, kitchen utensils, and mattresses. Rose of Sharon packed the family's clothes into a wooden box and tramped them down. Ma, in a moment of private grief, burned her stationery box of letters, clippings, and photographs in the stove, keeping only a few trinkets in an envelope. By dawn, the truck was loaded, the tarpaulin was tied down, and the family was ready. Grampa, who had refused to go, was drugged with soothing syrup and loaded onto the truck. The family climbed aboard, and Al drove the Hudson out of the yard. Muley Graves stood forlornly in the dooryard, watching them go. The truck crawled slowly through the dust toward the highway and the west.

Consequences and Aftermath

The decision to leave set the Joads on a path of continuous displacement and loss. Grampa died the first night on the road, unable to leave the land that had been his life. Granma died crossing the desert, and Ma had to lie beside her dead body all night to get the family past the agricultural inspection station. Noah, the first-born, walked away from the family at the Colorado River, unable to leave the water. Connie Rivers, Rose of Sharon's husband, abandoned her when the family reached the Hooverville. The family's unity, which Ma had fought to preserve, was cracked by each departure. Yet the decision also propelled them into a new kind of life. They found the government camp at Weedpatch, where they experienced dignity and community for the first time since leaving home. They worked in the peach orchards and cotton fields, faced the strike and the vigilantes, and endured the flood. Tom Joad, after killing a man in self-defense, was forced to leave the family, but his farewell speech—"Wherever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there"—transformed his personal flight into a commitment to collective struggle. The family's decision to leave, born of desperation, became the engine of their transformation from isolated farmers into part of a larger, suffering, and resistant people.