UNCLE JOHN
Uncle John divides his life into two parts: there's the part before his
wife died and the part after. We don't hear much about the earlier years.
But we know that John has been in pain every day since his tragic loss.
In time, most people recover from the loss of loved ones. Why hasn't John?
We overhear Tom Joad telling Casy why: "He figures it's his fault his
woman died." John feels guilty for refusing to call the doctor when
his young bride of four months complained of stomach pains. He gave her
a dose of painkiller instead. The next day she died of a burst appendix.
John considers his misdeed a sin, for which he has to suffer every day
of his life. Sometimes he can't take the torment and drowns his woes in
drink.
He blames the Joad family's misfortunes on himself and his sin. He also
calls himself a burden on the family. Maybe, he says, he should have stayed
back in Oklahoma. Is John belittling himself to win sympathy? Perhaps, because
people who tear themselves down are often asking indirectly for a shoulder
to lean on. If all he wants is a word of encouragement, though, he's picked
the wrong group. The Joads are pretty tired of John's whining and often
tell him to keep still and pull himself together.
If John weren't a Joad, he'd be like one of the roadside characters that
the family meets- a man like the fat filling-station attendant and the one-eyed
man in the junk yard. He'd need a good talking-to by Tom Joad, who'd tell
him to quit wallowing in self-pity and start making something of himself.
But since he is a Joad, Pa's older brother, in fact, the family carries
him along.
Does John seem out of place in a family that symbolizes endurance and courage?
Perhaps, but the Joads accommodate him easily. Then, too, John's weaknesses
contrast with the others' strengths. Having a member of the clan who's mired
in melancholy- and what family doesn't have one?- helps make the Joads altogether
more human.
Near the end of the story, Uncle John surprises us. He volunteers to bury
Rose of Sharon's stillborn baby. But instead of finding a burial site, he
launches the apple-crate coffin into a roadside stream and shouts, "Go
down an' tell 'em. Go down in the street and rot an' tell 'em that way."
In his own way John has reenacted the moment in the Old Testament when Moses'
mother sends her infant son into the bulrushes to keep him from growing
up in bondage. In his version of the incident, John sends a bitter message
to the world about the conditions of his people. It's his most daring act
in the whole novel.
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