Tom Joad
Wherever there's a fight
The worker's solidarity, personified.
Reformist Anarcho-SyndicalistOne of 729 ideologies · enter the Anarcho-Syndicalist hall →- Role
- Migrant worker (fiction)
- From
- The Grapes of Wrath
- Region
- United States
- Social band
- Reformist
- Placement
- −74 · −90 · +55
§ Where Tom Joad stands
3 axesTom's economics grow out of dispossession: the novel's interchapters indict the banks and land companies that evict tenant farmers, and in California the growers' surplus of desperate labour drives wages below subsistence. Following Casy, Tom comes to see that only workers acting together can win a living wage, and he imagines a world where people eat what they raise and live in the houses they build.
Tom's solidarity is built from below and aimed against power, not at seizing it. He meets the law mostly as deputies who harass migrants and break strikes, and the only order he trusts is the government camp at Weedpatch, which its residents run through their own elected committees and protect from the sheriff's men. His closing vow is to be there wherever a cop is beating up a guy.
Tom's progressivism is an awakening of conscience rather than a programme. Through Casy, who abandons hellfire preaching for the idea that all people share one big soul, and through Ma Joad's conclusion that family has come to mean anybody in need, Tom moves from loyalty to his own kin to a universal solidarity that cuts across the respectable prejudice against Okies.
How close are you to Tom Joad?
Three statements, one per axis. Answer them and we’ll drop you on the compass next to them.
§ The story
FictionTom Joad is the protagonist of John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath, published in 1939. Paroled from the Oklahoma state penitentiary at McAlester after serving four years of a seven-year sentence for killing a man in a fight, he comes home to find his family's tenant farm abandoned, its people tractored off the land by the banks during the Dust Bowl. With the former preacher Jim Casy, he joins the Joads on the long drive west along Route 66 to California.
In California the Joads find starvation wages, hostile deputies and squalid roadside camps, and Tom's habit of living one day at a time gives way to solidarity after a strike-breaker kills Casy, who has become a labour organiser, and Tom kills Casy's attacker. His farewell to Ma Joad, promising to be wherever hungry people fight to eat, made him an emblem of American labour. Henry Fonda played him in John Ford's 1940 film, Woody Guthrie set his story to song, and Bruce Springsteen revived him in The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995).
Notable for
- 01Hero of 'The Grapes of Wrath'
- 02'I'll be there' speech
- 03Symbol of labour solidarity
Key works & moments
- 1939John Steinbeck publishes The Grapes of Wrath; it wins the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
- OklahomaParoled from McAlester, Tom finds his family's farm abandoned and the tenants driven off the land.
- CaliforniaThe Joads find refuge in the self-governing government camp at Weedpatch.
- Chapter 28Hiding after Casy's killing, Tom tells Ma he will be wherever hungry people fight to eat.
- 1940Henry Fonda plays Tom in John Ford's film; Woody Guthrie records his ballad Tom Joad.
- 1995Bruce Springsteen releases the album The Ghost of Tom Joad.
In Tom Joad's words
“Wherever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there.”
§ Minds closest to Tom Joad
All minds →
§ Also in the Anarcho-Syndicalist hall
Enter the hall →§ Common questions
4 answersWhat is Tom Joad's political ideology?
Tom Joad is a working-class radical shaped by experience rather than theory: on the 99ideologies three-axis compass, a Reformist Anarcho-Syndicalist. Economically he leans far to the left (−74), concluding that dispossessed workers must act together against banks and growers. On governance he is strongly libertarian (−90), distrusting deputies and bosses and trusting only self-organised solidarity, and socially he is moderately progressive (+55), widening his loyalty from his own family to everyone in need.
Is Tom Joad left-wing or right-wing?
Left-wing. Tom ends The Grapes of Wrath committed to organising workers against the growers and police who keep them hungry, and his farewell speech became an anthem of the American labour left. His politics are instinctive rather than doctrinaire: he never joins a party, and his anger is aimed at concrete abuses such as eviction, starvation wages and police violence. That grassroots, anti-authority radicalism is why he reads as a syndicalist hero rather than a Marxist one.
Why was The Grapes of Wrath banned?
Because powerful Californians saw it as a slander and as subversive propaganda. In August 1939 the Kern County Board of Supervisors, whose county is the setting for much of the novel's California section, banned it from county libraries and schools, the growers' group Associated Farmers campaigned against it, and copies were publicly burned. Critics called Steinbeck a communist, but he was not one: he was a New Deal sympathiser who had reported on migrant camps in 1936 and portrayed the federal camp approvingly.
Which minds are closest to Tom Joad?
On the 99ideologies three-axis compass, the minds closest to Tom Joad are Helmut Rüdiger (99% alike), Christian Cornelissen (98% alike) and Alexander Schapiro (98% alike). The furthest is Adam Sutler (0% alike).