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...

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

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.

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...

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.

Seems like the government's got more interest in a dead man than a live one.

That Casy. He might have been a preacher but he seen things clear. He was like a lantern. He helped me to see things clear.

"Ma, will you get the hell off'a there! It's gonna be heavy enough..." That somehow passed the Board of Review censors.

If there was a law, they was workin' with maybe we could take it, but it ain't the law. They're workin' away our spirits, tryin' to make us cringe and crawl, takin' away our decency.

Listen, what is these reds? Every time ya turn around, somebody's callin' somebody else a red! What IS these reds, anyway?