Chapter 2

Chapter two begins with the introduction to one of the main characters, Tom Joad. He tells his life story to a truck driver when he is offered a ride. Young Tom Joad was sent to prison after he killed a man; he argued that it was out of self defense. He talks about receiving cards from his family, his cell mates, and his probation. Tom Joad is in search of his family and the farm they work on.

Tom Joad is a young man under the age of thirty. "His eyes were very dark brown and there was a hint of brown pigment in his eyeballs. His cheek bones were high and wide, and strong deep lines cut down his cheeks, in curves beside his mouth...The man's clothes were new--all of them, cheap and new. His gray cap was so new that the visor was still stiff and the button still on, not shapeless and bulged as it would be when it had served for a while all the various purposes of a cap--carrying sack, towel, handkerchief." His hands are roughened by hard, shiny calluses from the work at the prison. He is a somewhat quiet man, yet he is easily ruffled or annoyed. He is not ashamed of who he is, and he is therefore confident in his actions. The young Tom Joad loves his family and speaks of them fondly, and he is anxious to see them again.

John Steinbeck captured the scene very well in this chapter. He agained used imagery to make a clear picture of the characters and the setting. "Inside the screened restaurant a radio played, quiet dance music turned low the way it is when no one is listening...He was a heavy man, broad in the shoulders, thick in the stomach. His face was red and his blue eyes long and slittled from having squinted always at sharp light."The characters are dressed in clothing of the time, and each character has his or her own personality. In each despcription of the characters, Steinbeck reveals a clue about the nature of the character. So with his writing, the reader is absorbed into the book relating in some way or another to the humaness of the characters.