Chapter 26

Summary:
The Joads decided to leave the government camp in order to find work. They have run out of food and money and Winfield is starting to get sick. They head north and along the way they run into a man who tells them that there is work on a farm picking peaches. They reach the farm and they must be escorted into the camp because there are a group of men outside the gate protesting. After they settle into their shack they all go out to work and they earn some credit. After supper, Tom decides to go out and see what all the commotion outside the gate was all about. During his travels he runs into Jim Casy. Casy tells Tom all about the farm that they are working on and how they will lower the work wages and that the are out there protesting against it. While Casy is telling Tom this a group of police arrive and try to break up the protest. They find Tom and Casy hiding out and they kill Casy. Tom kills the man who killed Casy and he gets hit in the face and his face gets bruised really badly. Tom finds his way back to his family in there shack and sleeps for the night. The next day Tom tells the family what had happened, Winfield gets really sick and the family decides to leave the peach farm. At the end of the chapter the Joads find themselves parked next to a cotton with Tom hiding out in the woods until his face gets better.
Critical Thinking and Analysis: 
Some main themes that I find is this chapter is definitely protesting and how the law is against it. These people were just peacefully protesting against the cut wages that this peach farm gave to these workers. The violence only started when the cops came and burned them out and when they violently attacked the protesters in an attempt to get them to stop. A passage that I think really shows how cops were back then was on page 384 "Ya see?" he cried " I tol' you. Cops cause more trouble than they stop."I think this really shows how cops were shady and did whatever they wanted just because they had a powerful position.
I think another big theme in the chapter is poverty and starvation and how it changes people. Before the depression most people were all eating healthy and getting the nutrition they needed. Everyone would help each other out and pull together to get through a problem. In this chapter we are starting to see how people are starting to fend for themselves and they are trying to get ahead of the person next to them. The poverty and hardships that everyone is going through is starting to make the people cold and bitter. A passage that supports this theme is on page 403 " Ever'body's gittin' mean," said Pa. " Ever'body. You seen that fight today. Fella changes. Down that gov'ment camp was wasn' mean". I think this passage really shows that the world is changing including the way people treat on another.
Compare and Contrast
This chapter can relate to chapter 20 because it also showed the theme of shady cops and that they would do basically whatever they wanted because they were an authority figure. I think this could also relate to the Kent State shooting back in 1970. Four student protestors were shot on there campus by members of the Ohio National Guard. These protesters were doing nothing wrong