One good example of vivid imagery in The Grapes
of Wrath is found on the first page of Chapter 17, and again on the last page
of the chapter.
In the daylight [the migrant people] scuttled
like bugs to the westward; and as the dark caught them, they clustered like bugs near to
shelter and to water...But along the highway the cars of the migrant people crawled out
like bugs...
This describes
the need of the people to seek out the companionship of other families like themselves,
where they were able to find a sense of camaraderie and
community.
In Chapter 18, Steinbeck
writes:
The
water grew scarce...The sun drained the dry rocky country, and ahead were jagged broken
peaks...And now they were in flight form the sun and the drought...and when the daylight
came they saw the Colorado river below them...they sat in the cars looking at the lovely
water flowing by, and the green reeds jerking slowly in the
current.
The imagery presents
the changes in the landscape. Even as the Joads and Wilson travel, while there is only
water to be bought, through dried out and rocky inhospitable lands, ultimately they come
to water: not just a little, but flowing water, with plants growing in it, moving about
as the water travels by. That quickly, they come to what must seem to them an oasis in
the wilderness, perhaps symbolic of physical and spiritual
relief.
Again in Chapter 18, the importance of water is
described again:
The sun sank low in the afternoon, but the heat
did not seem to decrease. Tom awakened under his willow, and his mouth was parched and
his body was wet with sweat, and his head was dissatisfied with his rest. He staggered
to this feet and walked toward the water. He peeled off his clothes and waded in the
stream. And the moment the water was about him, his thirst was gone. He lay back in the
shallows and his body
floated.
This moment of
respite from the heat is especially vivid to the reader. It is easy to imagine the trip
these people are making and the terrible heat they must battle (especially Granma, who
is so sick). The burdens they carry are physical (in response to the heat and the
obstacles they face daily), and emotional and mental as
well.
Tom seems to be spiritually decimated, like a wasp
stuck in the attic between screen and window. However, when Tom steps into the water, he
is revived, body and soul. Water, the great giver of life, releases Tom from the
depleting, vice-like heat so that he feels refreshed; the fact that he is floating may
be symbolic of how spiritually uplifted he feels having enjoyed the water. With little
to find pleasure in most of he time, he even smiles when a youngster takes a swim and
scurries off seeing Tom already there.
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