Death of Grampa Joad

Grampa Joad, the fierce and cantankerous patriarch of the Joad family, dies of a stroke shortly after the family begins its migration from Oklahoma to California. His death occurs in the tent of the Wilson family, who have joined the Joads on the road, and it forces the family to confront the harsh realities of poverty, the law, and the loss of their ancestral identity. The secret burial that follows, conducted to avoid the cost of a formal funeral, marks the first major fracture in the family unit and foreshadows the further disintegration to come.

Causes and Background

Grampa Joad had been a vigorous, lecherous, and combative old man, given to dirty stories and violent outbursts. He was the titular head of the family, though his authority had become largely honorary. He had fiercely resisted leaving his land, declaring, "This here's my country. I b'long here. An' I don't give a goddamn if they's oranges an' grapes crowdin' a fella outa bed even. I ain't a-goin'." The family, desperate to get him to leave, drugged him with a mixture of coffee and soothing syrup, and he was loaded onto the truck unconscious. The journey itself was brutal: the family traveled in an overloaded Hudson Super-Six truck, exposed to the sun and dust. Grampa, drugged and disoriented, lay under the tarpaulin, his eyes "drugged and watery and still senseless." The strain of the journey, the heat, and the profound dislocation from his home proved fatal. As Jim Casy later observed, "Grampa didn' die tonight. He died the minute you took 'im off the place."

What Happens

The Joads and the Wilsons camped for the night near a culvert. Grampa was helped into the Wilson tent, where he lay on a mattress. He began to cry, a shocking display of weakness from a man who had never been seen to blubber before. Ma Joad, recognizing his grave condition, asked Jim Casy, who had been a preacher, to look at him. Casy found Grampa's pulse weak and his face flushed. Sairy Wilson, who had seen death before, suspected a stroke. Grampa's body began to twitch, and his face turned a blackish purple as his tongue blocked his airway. Casy pried open his jaws and held the tongue down with a stick, but the breathing became increasingly labored. At Granma's insistent demand, Casy began to recite the Lord's Prayer. As he reached the words "Give us this day—our daily bread—and forgive us—," Grampa's breathing stopped. Casy looked into his eyes and saw they were "clear and deep and penetrating, and there was a knowing serene look in them." Casy pronounced the death a "good quick stroke."

Consequences and Aftermath

The family immediately faced a crisis. They had only about a hundred and fifty dollars left, and a legal burial would cost forty dollars, which would jeopardize their ability to reach California. Pa Joad asserted the old way: "Grampa buried his pa with his own hand, done it in dignity, an' shaped the grave nice with his own shovel. That was a time when a man had the right to be buried by his own son an' a son had the right to bury his own father." The family decided on a secret burial. Tom Joad wrote a note on the endpaper of Sairy Wilson's Bible, identifying Grampa as "William James Joad, dyed of a stroke, old old man. His fokes bured him becaws they got no money to pay for funerls." He added a verse from Psalms: "Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered." The note was sealed in a fruit jar and placed under Grampa's hands. The men dug a grave by firelight, and each man took a turn shoveling dirt. The grave was leveled and strewn with dry grass to hide it. The event had a profound effect on the family. It was the first death on the journey, and it underscored their vulnerability and the loss of their old life. It also forged a bond with the Wilsons, who had provided the tent and the quilt for the burial. The death of Grampa, who embodied the family's connection to the land, was a symbolic severing of their roots. As Casy said, "He was that place, an' he knowed it." The family's decision to bury him in secret, breaking the law to preserve their meager funds, was a pragmatic but painful compromise that set a precedent for the moral choices they would have to make on the road ahead.