Uncle John's place

Uncle John's place, a small, unpainted, one-room house with a cooking lean-to and a little barn, becomes the temporary refuge for the Joad family after they are tractored off their own forty acres. Located about eight miles from the Joad farm, it is the cramped gathering point where the displaced family piles in "like gophers in a winter burrow." The house itself is a square little box, bare and unpainted, with a tin chimney from which smoke rises, and a yard littered with piled furniture, the blades and motor of the windmill, bedsteads, chairs, and tables—the detritus of a dismantled life. A Hudson Super-Six sedan, its top ripped in two with a cold chisel and fitted with a truck bed, stands in the yard, the vehicle that will carry them west. This place is not a home but a transit point, the last physical anchor before the family commits to the road.

The Family Council and the Decision to Leave

At Uncle John's place, the family holds its most consequential council. After the men return from selling their movable goods for a paltry eighteen dollars, the family gathers by the truck—the "new hearth, the living center of the family." Pa squats in the dust, drawing figures with a stick, and reports the meager sum. The family counts its members: Grampa and Granma, Pa and Ma, Uncle John, Noah, Tom, Al, Rose of Sharon and Connie, Ruthie and Winfield, plus the dogs. The question of whether to take the preacher Jim Casy along is debated, and Ma settles it with a firm declaration: "It ain't kin we? It's will we?" The council decides to leave the next day, and the decision triggers a frantic, night-long preparation. The family slaughters two pigs, salts the meat, and loads the truck with tools, clothes, mattresses, and the tarpaulin, working through the night by lantern light. The urgency is palpable; as Uncle John says, "What we hangin' aroun' for? I want to get shut of this."

Tom Joad's Return and Family Reunion

Tom Joad, newly paroled from McAlester, arrives at Uncle John's place with Jim Casy. He finds his father, Pa Joad, nailing sideboards onto the truck, and the reunion is a moment of quiet emotion. Pa, seeing Tom, drops his hammer and takes the nails from his mouth, saying wonderingly, "It's Tommy—It's Tommy come home." Ma, inside cooking breakfast, is surprised when Tom steps into the kitchen. Her hand sinks to her side, the fork clatters to the floor, and she breathes, "Thank God. Oh, thank God!" The family gathers: Grampa, Granma, Noah, and the younger children. Grampa, with his cantankerous energy, slaps Tom on the chest, and Granma bleats her war cry, "Pu-raise Gawd fur vittory." The reunion is complete when Rose of Sharon and her husband Connie Rivers arrive, and the family sits down to a breakfast of salt pork and biscuits, with Jim Casy offering a grace that is more a meditation on holiness than a prayer.

The Night of Preparation: Slaughter and Loading

The night before departure, the family works with a collective, almost feverish energy. Pa, Noah, Tom, and Al slaughter the two pigs in the sty, using the blunt head of an ax and a curving knife to release the pulsing streams of blood. The carcasses are dragged to the house, scalded with boiling water, scraped clean, and cut into salting blocks. Ma packs the meat into kegs, layering it with coarse salt. Meanwhile, the men load the truck: tools on the bottom, boxes of clothes, kitchen utensils in a gunny sack, cutlery and dishes in their box, and a gallon bucket tied on behind. Mattresses are laid on top, and the big tarpaulin is spread over the load and tied down. The children, Ruthie and Winfield, fall asleep in the dust, exhausted by the excitement. The work continues until the first gray of daylight, and the family gnaws on roasted pork bones as they wait for dawn.

Grampa's Resistance and the Departure

At the moment of departure, Grampa Joad refuses to go. He sits out back of the barn, his eyes dulled, and declares, "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 cannot argue with him, so Tom devises a plan: they give him coffee laced with soothing syrup, and he falls asleep. They lift him onto the truck and lay him under the tarpaulin. As the sun rises, the family climbs aboard—Ma and Granma in the cab, the others on top of the load. Muley Graves comes to say goodbye, and Pa gives him the dogs and chickens. Al starts the engine, the truck shudders and strains across the yard, and they crawl up the little hill, the red dust rising about them. Ma tries to look back, but the load cuts off her view. She straightens her head and peers ahead, a great weariness in her eyes. Uncle John's place recedes behind them, the last fixed point in a life that has become a road.