The Grapes of Wrath: Mood 1 key example

Though there are brief scenes of joy and happiness throughout the novel, its overall mood is melancholic. Its primary characters have been forced off the land where their families have lived for generations, and though they hope for a better future, they nevertheless feel a keen sense of loss for all that they must leave behind. When Ted and Casy find Muley Graves, an old neighbor of the Joad family, near the Joad’s old property in Sallisaw, Oklahoma, Muley’s somber reflections on the past reflect the melancholy tone of the novel: 

Muley went on, “Like a damn ol’ graveyard ghos’. I been goin’ aroun’ the places where stuff happened. Like there’s a place over by our forty; in a gully they’s a bush. Fust time I ever laid with a girl was there [...]  So I went there an’ I laid down on the groun’, an’ I seen it all happen again. An’ there’s the place down by the barn where Pa got gored to death by a bull. An’ his blood is right in that groun’, right now. Mus’ be. Nobody never washed it out. An’ I put my han’ on that groun’ where my own pa’s blood is part of it.’’ 

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