The Grapes of Wrath, Ironies

13. One of the main ironies in this book is that the Joad family, and thousands of other families like them, left their homes to get better work in California, when they were better off staying home and holding out for something better. The families were sent brochures that told them of the wonderful California. There were orchards as far as the eye could see and there was so much work that you could never go poor. Everyone thought that they would go and have a much better life in California. Ma thought that they would go to California and live in a small white house, and that the family would go out everyday and pick peaches, cotton and grapes. She never stopped to think, and no one else did either, that everyone else would be going there with the same dream. The reality was that it was extremely difficult to get work. There were way too many workers and way too few jobs. Everyone found out the hard way that there was no easy way to live in California. They had to go looking for jobs everyday, and come back to camp everyday jobless. They spent weeks on end looking for jobs so that they could feed their wife and kids. When they did find a job they were paid very little. It was barely enough to feed their families. Sometimes it was not enough for them to feed their families. The camps they lived in were dirty and nothing like what they had imagined. They had to live in tents and be harassed by the police and other more fortunate people. No running water, no toilets and no showers. I am sure the smell would be terrible. It is almost funny how drastically different the two were. They dream of nice houses and good work, and they show up and find they have to live in dirty camps with low paying or no work.