Jackrabbit

The jackrabbit is a creature of the open, drought-stricken land in The Grapes of Wrath, appearing at key moments to embody the desperate flight and fragile survival that define the migrant experience. It is caught in headlights, killed by passing vehicles, and scuttles through the dust alongside the Joads' journey, marking the harshness of the road and the thinning line between life and death. Its presence is a small, recurring emblem of the natural world under pressure, mirroring the human displacement that drives the novel.

Appearance and Role in the Landscape

The jackrabbit first appears in the context of Muley Graves's survival. For a while, Muley says, he ate frogs, squirrels, and prairie dogs, but then he set wire nooses on the tracks in the dry stream brush and caught rabbits, including jackrabbits. This early mention establishes the jackrabbit as a source of food for those who, like Muley, refuse to leave the land and must live off it by any means. The creature is part of the sparse, resilient fauna of the Dust Bowl, a resource for the desperate.

Encounter on the Road

Later, during the Joads' journey west, the jackrabbit appears in a more ominous context. As Tom Joad drives the Dodge car at night, a jackrabbit gets caught in the headlights and bounces along ahead, cruising easily, its great ears flopping with every jump. It tries to break off the road, but the wall of darkness thrusts it back. When bright headlights approach from the opposite direction, the rabbit hesitates, falters, then turns and bolts toward the lesser lights of the Dodge. There is a small soft jolt as it goes under the wheels. Tom says, "We sure squashed him," and adds, "Some fellas like to hit 'em. Gives me a little shakes ever' time." This moment transforms the jackrabbit from a distant symbol of the wild into a direct casualty of the migrant road, its death a small, unsettling event that contrasts with the casual cruelty of others.

Final Appearance and Thematic Significance

In the final leg of the desert crossing, the jackrabbit appears again as a marker of the landscape's hostility. All night the Joads bore through the hot darkness, and jackrabbits scuttled into the lights and dashed away in long jolting leaps. Here the creature is no longer caught or killed, but its frantic, repeated flight underscores the relentless, exhausting movement of the migrants themselves. The jackrabbit's constant dodging and running, its life reduced to a series of narrow escapes, mirrors the precarious existence of the Joads and the thousands of other families on the road. The creature is a small, persistent presence in a world where survival depends on speed and luck, and its fate—sometimes crushed, sometimes just barely escaping—echoes the thin margin between life and death that defines the migrant journey.