Casy's work. He tells Mama that she won't have to worry about him because whenever injustice is being committed he'll be there. He has come to believe that people must help other people. His sister,Rose of Sharon, is a different case. All during the novel, she seems more concerned about herself and "getting milk" so she can deliver a healthy baby. Unfortunately, her baby is stillborn. However, she seems to have also learned that people must care for each other. In the barn, she is the only one who can save the man who is dying from starvation. She still has milk in her breasts that would have fed her dead child. By offering to nurse a grown man, she shows that she now understands, as Tom did, that people must help each other in order to survive. Thus, the main characters of the novel have changed and now understand and agree with the theme Steinbeck has been trying to convey during the entire novel: the common man must sacrifice and work together if he is to overcome all the injustices and threats to his survival. Rose of Sharon's act of feeding the starving man is an unexpected but appropriate place to end his novel because one of the main characters who has been so selfish during most of the novel commits a truly unselfish act.