Furnerals
In John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath, follows the Joad family as they migrate to California, The trip to California is the family last attempt to restore their livelihood lost in their destroyed Oklahoma home. Unfortunately for the Joads, throughout the novel the family losing family members upon arriving in California. The theme of death in the novel explores Steinbeck’s interpretations of how an Okies family would bury their dead and the funeral practices surrounding the 1930s.
The first death for the Joads is Grandpa Joad who died of a stroke along their route to California. Grandpa Joad is the only member who gets the most genuine funeral even though it is a simple burial in the ground. The Joads are unable to provide a proper funeral because it would cost too much money but also they worry about the laws about burying bodies “We got to figger what to do. They's laws. You got to report a death, an' when you do that, they either take forty dollars for the undertaker or they take him for a pauper” (Steinbeck 93). Seeing how the family is moving state lines with the son Tom breaking his parole, the Joads would rather stay out of trouble from the law. Nevertheless just as Pa says,
“Sometimes a fella got to sift the law. I'm sayin' now I got the right to bury my own pa. Anybody got somepin to say?"
The preacher rose high on his elbow. "Law changes," he said, "but 'got to's' go on. You got the right to do what you got to do." (Steinbeck 94)
Both Pa Joad and the former preacher, Casey agree that the family has the right to produce their funeral for Grandpa as if the law isn’t above a higher power. However, the Joads could have bury Grandpa without the Law’s permission. According Percival E Jackson's 1936 The Law of Cadavers and of Burial and Burial Places,
“Local statutes generally required the issuance of a burial permit, which invariably permits burial in regularly maintained and designated places, although in sparsely populated communities, in the absence of ordinance, nothing prevents the designation of informal places of burial, provided they do not constitute a nuisance. Since, in the United States, the remote habitat of the new settler frequently prevented interment in even a community burial ground, there naturally arose the custom of burial in a portion of one's own land. Under these rough and new conditions, decent burial did not necessarily import burial in a churchyard, in consecrated ground, or even in an established burial ground. (Jackson 61)
In this case, the law allows some exceptions but the Joads are unaware of this knowledge because they are installed with the idea that the government has power over the living and the death. For Steinbeck uses “the Joads' belief in the supposed power of the government to control even the interment of their family member to emphasize just how much the governing authority was feared.” (Lott 59) The fear of the Government authority continues to threats the Joads on their journey however Grandpa’s funeral becomes one of the few instances for the family to express their agency during their migration and discrimination.