Buzzard

The buzzard is a recurring scavenger bird in The Grapes of Wrath, whose circling presence over the drought-stricken land and the migrant journey serves as a persistent emblem of death, decay, and the predatory forces that shadow the dispossessed. It appears at moments of crisis—over a broken-down car, during a family's desperate flight—linking the natural world's carrion-eaters to the social and economic system that preys on the hungry and the weak.

Appearance and Symbolic Role

The buzzard first appears in the novel's opening chapters as part of the ecological devastation of the Dust Bowl. The land itself is dying: the corn is ruined, the topsoil is gone, and the air is thick with dust. The buzzard, a bird that feeds on carrion, is a natural inhabitant of this landscape of death. Its presence is not incidental; it is a visual shorthand for the fate that awaits those who cannot escape. The buzzard does not kill, but it waits. It is the patient, inevitable end. This makes it a powerful symbol for the economic forces that are also waiting—the banks, the tractor companies, the large landowners who are circling the small farmers, ready to consume what remains.

The Buzzard and the Joads' Journey

The buzzard appears directly in the narrative during the Joad family's journey west. As Tom Joad and the preacher Jim Casy work to repair the broken connecting-rod bearing on the Wilson family's car, a buzzard's shadow slides across the earth. The family looks up at the sailing black bird. This moment comes just after Tom has assessed the damage and realized the repair will take days, costing precious time and money. The buzzard's shadow is a silent omen, a reminder that death and failure are always near. The family is stranded, their money is running out, and the buzzard's circling is a visual echo of their precarious position. The bird does not need to act; its mere presence is enough to communicate the threat.

The Buzzard and the Land

The buzzard is also a creature of the land itself, a part of the natural order that has been disrupted by human greed and ecological disaster. In the intercalary chapters, the novel describes the abandoned farmhouses, the empty fields, and the wild cats and mice that move in. The buzzard is part of this process of decay and reclamation. It is a sign that the land is no longer productive, that it has been used up and left to die. The buzzard's presence is a judgment on the system that has destroyed the land and the people who lived on it. It is a reminder that nature, though wounded, will continue its own cycles of life and death, indifferent to human suffering.

The Buzzard and the Social Order

Beyond its literal role, the buzzard functions as a metaphor for the social and economic predators of the novel. The large landowners, the banks, and the vigilantes are all buzzards in their own way. They do not create; they consume. They wait for the small farmers to fail, and then they move in to take what is left. The buzzard's patient circling mirrors the patient cruelty of a system that allows people to starve while food rots in the fields. The novel's most famous image of this is the destruction of oranges and the slaughter of pigs to keep prices high, while hungry people watch. The buzzard is the natural counterpart to this man-made waste, a creature that thrives on the death that the system produces.

The Buzzard and the Ending

In the novel's final chapters, as the floodwaters rise and the family is forced to take refuge in a barn, the buzzard is no longer present. The natural world has shifted from drought and dust to flood and rain. The buzzard, a bird of dry, open spaces, gives way to the water and the cold. But its symbolic work is done. The family has been stripped of everything—their land, their home, their dignity, their children. The buzzard's shadow has passed over them, but they have not been consumed. The novel ends not with death, but with a strange, ambiguous act of life: Rose of Sharon breastfeeding a starving man. The buzzard's cycle of death is broken, at least for a moment, by an act of human compassion. The bird's absence in the final scene is as significant as its presence earlier; it suggests that the human spirit, though battered, can still resist the forces that would consume it.