The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

Jane Darwell: Ma Joad

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Quotes 

• [last lines] 

  Ma Joad : Rich fellas come up an' they die, an' their kids ain't no good an' they die out. But we keep a'comin'. We're the people that live. They can't wipe us out; they can't lick us. We'll go on forever, Pa, 'cause we're the people.

• Tom Joad : I been thinking about us, too, about our people living like pigs and good rich land layin' fallow. Or maybe one guy with a million acres and a hundred thousand farmers starvin'. And I been wonderin' if all our folks got together and yelled...

  Ma Joad : Oh, Tommy, they'd drag you out and cut you down just like they done to Casy.

  Tom Joad : They'd drag me anyways. Sooner or later they'd get me for one thing if not for another. Until then...

  Ma Joad : Tommy, you're not aimin' to kill nobody.

  Tom Joad : No, Ma, not that. That ain't it. It's just, well as long as I'm an outlaw anyways... maybe I can do somethin'... maybe I can just find out somethin', just scrounge around and maybe find out what it is that's wrong and see if they ain't somethin' that can be done about it. I ain't thought it out all clear, Ma. I can't. I don't know enough.

  Ma Joad : How am I gonna know about ya, Tommy? Why they could kill ya and I'd never know. They could hurt ya. How am I gonna know?

  Tom Joad : Well, maybe it's like Casy says. A fellow ain't got a soul of his own, just little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody, then...

  Ma Joad : Then what, Tom?

  Tom Joad : Then it don't matter. I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build - I'll be there, too.

  Ma Joad : I don't understand it, Tom.

  Tom Joad : Me, neither, Ma, but - just somethin' I been thinkin' about.

• [the family is leaving the farm, heading for California] 

  Al Joad : Ain't you gonna look back, Ma? Give the ol' place a last look?

  Ma Joad : We're going' to California, ain't we? All right then let's go to California.

  Al Joad : That don't sound like you, Ma. You never was like that before.

  Ma Joad : I never had my house pushed over before. Never had my family stuck out on the road. Never had to lose everything I had in life.

• Ma Joad : Well, Pa, a woman can change better'n a man. A man lives sorta - well, in jerks. Baby's born or somebody dies, and that's a jerk. He gets a farm or loses it, and that's a jerk. With a woman, it's all in one flow, like a stream - little eddies and waterfalls - but the river, it goes right on. Woman looks at it thata way.

• Ma Joad : There, gramma! There's California.

  Grandma Joad : Phbbtt!

• Ma Joad : There ain't no family now. And Winfield, what's he gonna be this way? Growin' up wild. And Ruthie too. Just like animals. Got nothing to trust.

• Ma Joad : I ain't never gonna be scared no more. I was, though. For a while it looked as though we was beat. Good and beat. Looked like we didn't have nobody in the whole wide world but enemies. Like nobody was friendly no more. Made me feel kinda bad and scared too, like we was lost and nobody cared... .