Chapter 17

Chapter seventeen talks about other migrant families other than the Joad's and the Wilson's. It talks about how the migrant families were able to keep going and to survive. This is their hope, their "water." They would not be able to survive without the company of each other. Their bonds with people and communication provides an escape from the terrible idea of their journey. However, to not ruin their Utopian world inside their Distopian world, they set up rules and guidelines which eventually become unofficial laws. "At first the families were timid in the building and tumbling worlds, but gradually the technique of building worlds became their technique. Then leaders emerged, then laws were made, then codes came into being. And as the worlds moved westward they were more complete and better furnished, for their builders were more experienced in building them."

Their rules are common rules, manners. "The families learned what rights must be observed--the right of privacy in the tent; the right to keep the past black hidden in the heart; the right to talk and to listen; the right to refuse help or to accept, to offer help or to decline it; the right of son to court and daughter to be courted; the right of the hungry to be fed; the rights of the pregnant and the sick to transcend all other rights." Yet this is ironic, because not everyone followed these rules in the camps. Also their mini-government had no real power in the United States. The people were still under the government of the United States. However, I think that they were mad at the government and this was a way, in their minds, to get back at the government of the United States. This was their escape, and in a way, their revenge.

After Steinbeck talks about the generalization of the camps and the new "worlds and governments," he brings the reader inside one of these small camps, showing what it was like. When he narrows the field down from multiple camps to one camp, he sets up for his next chapter, which talks of one of the families that travels the road and sets up at one of these camps, the Joad's family and the Wilson's family.