Shovel

The shovel appears throughout The Grapes of Wrath as a plain, functional object that accumulates meaning as the Joad family's journey unfolds. It is first a tool of daily farm work, then an instrument of fatal violence, and finally a tool of survival again, its changing uses tracing the arc of Tom Joad's life and the family's dispossession.

Identity and First Appearance

The shovel is introduced not as a described object but through the action it enables. When Tom Joad recounts the killing that sent him to prison, he explains that during a drunken fight at a dance, Herb Turnbull came at him with a knife. Tom says, "They was this here shovel leanin' against the schoolhouse, so I grabbed it an' smacked 'im over the head." The shovel was simply there, leaning against a wall, a piece of the everyday landscape that became a weapon in a moment of crisis. Tom tells Muley Graves that he "knocked his head plumb to squash" and later says, "if I seen Herb Turnbull comin' for me with a knife right now, I'd squash him down with a shovel again." The shovel here is not premeditated violence but an opportunistic response, a tool repurposed in a flash.

The Shovel as a Tool of Burial

When Grampa Joad dies suddenly beside the road, the family faces the problem of burying him without money for a funeral and without legal permission. The shovel becomes the central instrument of this secret burial. Pa marks out the ground "eight feet long and three feet wide" and the work goes on in relays: "Pa chopped the earth with the mattock and then Uncle John shoveled it out. Al chopped and Tom shoveled, Noah chopped and Connie shoveled." The shovel passes from hand to hand, each man taking his turn, and the dirt flies out of the hole in quick spurts. When Tom is shoulder deep, he asks, "How deep, Pa?" and Pa answers, "Good an' deep. A couple feet more." After the body is laid in, Pa takes the shovel, half fills it with dirt, and spreads it gently into the black hole. He hands the shovel to Uncle John, and then it goes from hand to hand until every man has taken his duty and his right. Then Pa attacks the mound of loose dirt and hurriedly fills the hole. Tom insists they level the grave and strew dry grass over it to hide it, saying, "'F we leave a grave, they'll have it open in no time." Pa objects, "It ain't right to leave a grave unmounded," but Tom reminds him of his parole. Pa takes the shovel from John and levels the grave, saying, "She'll sink, come winter." The shovel here is a tool of both reverence and concealment, performing a necessary duty while also hiding the evidence of that duty from the law.

The Shovel as a Weapon Again

When Jim Casy is murdered by a vigilante with a pick handle, Tom Joad again grabs a weapon in a moment of fury. This time it is not a shovel but a pick handle that he wrenches from the killer's hands. However, the shovel's earlier role as a weapon echoes in this scene: Tom's first killing was with a shovel, and now he kills again with a similar blunt instrument. The pattern of violence repeats, and the shovel's earlier use foreshadows this second killing. After the killing, Tom hides in a cave of blackberry vines, and when Ma comes to him, his face is swollen and his nose is crushed. He tells her, "I—I clubbed a guy," and when she asks if he killed him, he says, "I—don't know. I was nuts. Tried to." The shovel is not present in this scene, but its earlier use as a weapon haunts the moment, linking the two killings and the two phases of Tom's life.

The Shovel as a Tool of Survival

In the final chapters, as floodwaters threaten the boxcar camp, the shovel returns to its original function as a tool of labor. Pa and the other men work frantically to build a levee, and the shovel is the primary instrument of this desperate construction. Pa drives his shovel into the mud, and "the shovelful lifted with a sucking sound." He drives it again and throws the mud into the low place on the stream bank. The men work in relays, and when one man drops his shovel, another takes it up. The shovel here is a tool of collective survival, used to hold back the rising water. When the levee breaks and the water pours through, Uncle John takes the shovel to bury the stillborn baby. He carries the apple box containing the body to the stream and guides it into the current, then "grabbed the shovel and went rapidly back to the boxcars." The shovel is now a tool of both burial and disposal, a grim echo of Grampa's burial. The shovel's journey through the novel—from weapon to burial tool to weapon again to survival tool—mirrors the Joad family's own journey from settled life to dispossession to desperate struggle. It is a plain object that accumulates the weight of violence, grief, and survival, never becoming symbolic in a heavy-handed way but always remaining a functional tool that the characters use to do what they must.