Chapters 30–33 Summary and Analysis
Chapter 30
The cotton picking season finally arrives, but wages are cut and tensions mount as the rich farmers grow even more wary of union organizers. Elsa is forced to have both of her children pick cotton, even though it pains her to take them out of school. During a conversation with Jean, Elsa admits her feelings for Jack, but she is scared off from pursuing anything romantic by her torrid history with men and her lingering insecurities about her appearance. Jean encourages her to think about the future rather than letting the past get in the way of her potential happiness.
Loreda continues her research into communism, scaring Elsa. Elsa worries that they will lose their cabin and be left completely destitute if Loreda is caught discussing unions by the overseers. There are already hundreds of migrant workers who are unemployed, and Elsa fears that even if all of the existing workers agree to strike, it won’t make a difference to the farmers, as there are always people willing to work.
One night, the Martinellis receive a flyer under their door advertising an upcoming Workers Alliance meeting. Loreda wants to go, but Elsa tells her that it is too dangerous.
Chapter 31
On the night of the meeting, Loreda sneaks out and attends the meeting. Jack riles up the crowd, telling them that if they don’t strike, the big farmers will simply starve them out year-by-year, lowering their wages and extending their workdays. Loreda is invigorated by his speech, but Elsa shows up and harshly shuts down both Loreda and Jack. She tells Loreda that she feels as though she has failed at nearly everything as a mother but that she will not fail to keep her children safe. Loreda, however, tells Elsa that she has not failed and that it is because of Elsa’s parenting that Loreda is able to think for herself. Elsa won’t hear it and insistently tells Loreda that it is too dangerous.
The next day, Loreda learns that there will be a strike meeting at the Welty camp at midnight. She is further enraged when Mr. Welty announces that he will be cutting wages once again, as he knows the laborers have been talking to union organizers. Barbed wire has been added along the fence lines of the fields, and a gun tower has been erected in order to intimidate the laborers.
That night, Loreda attempts to sneak out again, but Elsa catches her. Loreda refuses to go back to bed, so a reluctant Elsa attends the meeting with her. However, the meeting is disrupted by the arrival of armed foremen. Elsa and Loreda make it back to their cabin, and Elsa hopes that the violence will finally put a stop to Loreda’s fancies. Instead, however, Loreda announces that “sometimes you have to fight back.”
Chapter 32
The next day, when Elsa and Loreda go to pick up their relief money, they are dismayed to learn that Mr. Welty has instituted a policy whereby anyone who is capable of picking cotton is not eligible for state assistance. They are met outside the relief office by a frantic Jeb Dewey, who informs Elsa that Jean is sick and needs her help.
Elsa and Loreda rush to the encampment and find Jean in a bad state. Elsa sends Loreda to the Welty store to buy medicine, but Loreda returns with the news that the store is closed down in order to send a message to the organizing workers about how dependent they are on Mr. Welty.
A furious Elsa drives to the hospital and demands aspirin....
(This entire section contains 1465 words.)
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After being denied due to her status as an Okie, she grabs a baseball bat from her truck and threatens the woman at the front desk. The woman gives her the aspirin but then calls a security guard. However, the guard reveals that he was also an immigrant once, and rather than stopping Elsa, he instead gives her five dollars and lets her go.
Elsa returns to Jean, but her illness is too far gone. Jean dies surrounded by her family. A distraught Elsa screams and cries with Loreda. After gathering herself, she asks Loreda if she knows where to find Jack and the other communists.
Loreda and Elsa arrive at the barn that the Workers Alliance uses as a homebase. Elsa asks Jack if he thinks a strike will actually work. He says that it is dangerous, but Elsa also acknowledges that the way they are living right now is dangerous. She recalls something that her grandfather, a Texas Ranger and the only person from her birth family she was ever close to, used to say: “Courage is fear you ignore.”
Chapter 33
The next day, an anxious Loreda surreptitiously spreads the word about the upcoming strike meeting. When she returns to the cabin, the family reads the latest letter from Rose and Tony. They explain that the dust storms have died down somewhat and that the government is finally sending water in the hopes of growing small crop yields. When Loreda asks if they will ever see Rose and Tony again, Elsa affirms that they will, and she finally tells her children a little bit about her own childhood. She explains that she grew up in a house without much love and that Rose and Tony are the ones who saved her. She tells Loreda that it was she who taught Elsa how to truly love and be loved. Loreda is embarrassed of the way she treated her mother in the past, but Elsa tells her that she never stopped loving her.
At the strike meeting, nearly five hundred migrant laborers show up. Jack takes the stage and announces that the Workers Alliance will be staging strikes at several major farm sites on October 6. The gathering is interrupted, however, when the police show up. In the rush to escape, Elsa is separated from her children. As she tries to reach them, she is clubbed in the head and knocked unconscious.
Elsa wakes up in Jack’s residence in town. Jack reassures her that his friend Natalia took her children back to the cabin safely. He tells Elsa that he has never been worried about the consequences of labor organizing before, but now that he has seen her hurt, he is afraid. Elsa is touched, and after she takes a bath and washes the blood off of herself, she boldly approaches him in nothing but a towel. Jack and Elsa have sex, and Jack takes the time to ensure that Elsa genuinely enjoys herself, which Rafe never did. He calls her “my love” in the aftermath and tells her he will be there for her.
Loreda nervously paces the cabin until her mother and Jack finally return. As the group discusses the upcoming strike, Jack and Natalia recall a striking effort they participated in in San Francisco at which the National Guard was called and strikers were killed. Loreda remarks that even though it is dangerous, the workers must still fight back.
Analysis
Elsa is firmly against anything to do with communism, as she fears that it will only bring trouble into her life. However, Loreda’s growing interest puts mother and daughter at odds once again. Notably, Elsa seems less ideologically against the notion of communism at this point than she was earlier in the novel. Even if she still thinks it is too much of a risk, the treatment of the workers under Mr. Welty, along with Jack’s rhetoric, seems to have convinced her that at least from a philosophical standpoint, communism is not entirely evil.
Jean’s death represents the final breaking point for Elsa. She has withstood every hardship up until this point with poise, following the biblical injunction to “turn the other cheek.” However, watching Jean die and knowing that her four children will grow up motherless sends Elsa into a spiral of anger and grief, which is only exacerbated when the hospital refuses to even give her aspirin unless it is under threat of violence. Elsa knows that it is the unsanitary state of the migrant camp that led to Jean’s illness, and she is furious at the system of prejudice, power, and enforced poverty that has kept Jean and her family at the camp for over a year.
Rather than succumbing to her grief, however, Elsa decides to take action. She realizes that nothing is going to change for her or her family unless they fight back. Indeed, Elsa herself could one day end up like Jean, and she has no husband to care for her children in her absence. This newfound resolve gives her strength, and she lets her anger carry her into the Workers Alliance strike plan.
