"'No,' Casy
said, 'you couldn' a done nothin'. Your way was fixed an' Grampa didn'
have no part in it. He didn' suffer none. Not after fust thing this
mornin'. He's jus' stayin' with the lan'. He couldn' leave
it.'" (146)
The quote above
affected me because it shows how Grampa was affected when he was
forcefully removed from his land. He
had grown up on that land, and his roots were planted deep, and moving was like
yanking out his reason for living.
When I was younger, the summer before second grade, my
grandparents came to live with my parents and I. They are my dad’s parents, and they have
lived in India for their whole lives, coming twice to the United States to
visit their children who had immigrated here in search of a better life. I remember when they first arrived it was a
huge adjustment for everyone. We
actually had to move houses so we could fit everyone. My dad and aunt were worried how they would adjust
to life in America, because it is vastly different from life in India, and also
because they did not know anyone here.
The first few months, they were constantly getting sick, and I could
often hear my grandma crying in their bedroom about how she wanted to go
back. They were forcefully uprooted from
their home, and their bodies were reaping the consequences.
Although thankfully my grandparents did not suffer the same
fate as Grampa Joad did in The Grapes of
Wrath, it definitely has made an impact on me, getting me thinking
on what could have happened, and how life would have been differently.
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