Slaughtering the pigs

On the night before the Joad family's departure for California, the slaughtering of the two shoats became the family's last collective act of self-provision on their own land, a ritual of necessity that turned living animals into salted meat for the journey. The decision to kill the pigs was made during the family council that gathered around the truck, the new hearth of the family. Pa Joad, calculating the family's resources, announced his intention: "I aim to get those pigs salted down to eat on the way. We gonna need meat. Carry the salt kegs right with us." The pigs, black shoats that had been sunning and comfortable in their pen, were not merely food; they were the last of the Joads' livestock, a tangible link to the farming life they were leaving behind.

The Slaughter and Butchering

The work began after supper, under the light of lanterns. Pa, Noah, Tom, and Al moved down to the sty, carrying a lantern, a bow-bladed butchering knife, and an ax. The sleepy young pigs struggled to their feet, grunting suspiciously. Tom struck twice with the blunt head of the ax, and Noah, leaning over the felled pigs, found the great artery with his curving knife and released the pulsing streams of blood. The carcasses were dragged to the house, leaving two black trails in the dust. Noah slipped his knife between tendon and bone of the hind legs, and pointed sticks held the legs apart while the carcasses were hung from the two-by-four rafters that stuck out from the house. The men carried boiling water and poured it over the black bodies. Noah slit the bodies from end to end and dropped the entrails out on the ground, while Tom with a scrubber and Ma with a dull knife scraped the skins to take out the bristles. Al brought a bucket and shoveled the entrails away, followed by two cats and the dogs.

Salting and Preservation

Once the carcasses were scraped clean, the real work of preservation began. Noah carried the slabs of meat into the kitchen and cut it into small salting blocks. Ma patted coarse salt in, laid it piece by piece in the kegs, careful that no two pieces touched each other. She laid the slabs like bricks and pounded salt in the spaces. Noah cut up the side-meat and the legs. Ma kept her fire going, and as Noah cleaned the ribs and the spines and leg bones of all the meat he could, she put them in the oven to roast for gnawing purposes. The preacher, Jim Casy, offered to help with the salting, but Ma initially resisted, saying "It's women's work." Casy replied, "It's all work. They's too much of it to split it up to men's or women's work." Ma finally relented, and Casy took up the blocks of pork and patted on the salt while she watched him, laying them in the kegs as she had, until she was satisfied.

The Urgency to Leave

The slaughtering and salting of the pigs became the catalyst for the family's sudden decision to leave that very night. As the meat was being prepared, a sense of hurry crept into them. Uncle John, his pressures too great, broke over the edge: "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 said, "They say it's two thousan' miles. That's a hell of a long ways. We oughta go." The family, now committed to going, worked through the night, loading the truck with the kegs of salted pork, the roasted bones, and all their remaining possessions. The pigs, once living creatures in a sty, had been transformed into two kegs of salt pork, a pan of roasted bones, and the fuel for the family's final, frantic push toward the highway and the west.