Grapes Of Wrath

Summary: Chapter 27

Signs appear everywhere advertising work in the cotton fields. Wages are decent, but workers without cotton-picking sacks are forced to buy them on credit. There are so manyworkers that some are unable to do enough work even to pay for their sacks. Some of the owners are crooked and rig the scales used to weigh the cotton. To counter this practice, the migrants often loadstones in their sacks.
Summary: Chapter 28

Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. . . . An’ when our folks eat [what] they raise an’ live in the houses they build . . .I’ll be there.
(See Important Quotations Explained)
At the cotton fields, the Joads are given a boxcar to live in, but they are forced to share it with another family, the Wainwrights. They soon makeenough money to buy food and clothing, and Ma Joad is even able to indulge and treat Ruthie and Winfield to a box of Cracker Jack candy. When another girl, envious of Ruthie’s treat, picks a fight withher, Ruthie boasts angrily that her older brother has killed two men and is now in hiding. Ma Joad hurries into the woods to warn Tom that his secret has been revealed. Sorrowfully, she urges him toleave lest he be caught. Tom shares with his mother some of Jim Casy’s words of wisdom, which he has been pondering since his friend died: every man’s soul is simply a small piece of a great soul. Tomsays that he has decided to unify his soul with this great soul by working to organize the people, as Casy would have wanted. Ma reminds Tom that Casy died for his efforts, but Tom jokes that he willbe faster to duck out of harm’s way. As Ma returns to the boxcar, the owner of a small farm stops her and tells her he needs pickers for his twenty acres. Ma brings the news of the job back to theboxcar, where Al announces that he and Agnes Wainwright plan to be married. The families celebrate.
The next day, the two families travel to the small plantation, where so many workers have amassed...