Mysteriousness

Ma takes Ruthie, Winfield, and Rose of Sharon to a barn to keep warm and that is where they find the dying man and a little boy concerned about his father’s well-being. Ma tells him repeatedly to hush when the boy would cry about his dad not making it. The little boy mentioned he had busted into a store window and stole bread to give to his father, but his father could not keep it down and at that point his father was weaker than before.

Ma throughout the novel has always been concerned for others. In any way she can help out she definitely will. In one of the Hoovervilles she shared the little that she had of her stew not only with her family but also with fifteen little ones who surrounded her as she cooked. The generosity and kindness comes from Ma understanding what it is to have nothing and also the experiences she has had with people treating her like she was less than dirt.

In the last scene of The Grapes of Wrath Rose of Sharon smiled “mysteriously” once she gives the dying man milk from her breast. Steinbeck used the undramatized narrator technique as he ends the book to help the reader develop his or her own opinion of whether Rose of Sharon went through a dynamic change or a relative change. I believe it was a dynamic change because Rose of Sharon has been through a lot. She was on the road for weeks in a crammed up truck, witnessed the family dog get run over, her grandmother and grandfather died on this same road trip, her husband, after making life plans with her, decides to abandon her (like a coward) and not mention to anyone that he left, and throughout all of this she ends up losing her baby. When the dying man is there in the barn almost lifeless the mysteriousness begins. Rose of Sharon who throughout the novel has been all about her own personal advancement is willing to help a dying man without anyone forcing her to do so. A positive change has come over her and Ma is proud of her for it. Rose of Sharon has done something that is bigger than herself and is becoming like Tom and Jim Casy, a piece of the whole shebang.