Innocence Gone

I would like to take a moment to examine the purpose Ruthie and Winfield Joad in the novel. In class, we discussed the main characters of Ma, Pa, Tom, Casy, and even Rose of Sharon, but Ruthie and Winfield are there throughout the novel. In a book where so many characters are adopted and disappear, the two youngest characters must be of importance.

The most important thing the two children do for the novel and the farming community beyond the novel is show the lack of childhood forced upon the migrant workers. By being removed from their home, Ruthie and Winfield do not get to spend their time playing games or learning the trades of the gender and station. Before the Joad family leaves Uncle John’s place, the whole family is involved in the preparations, and while trying to be awake while the adults were working, the two children fall asleep on the porch. The scene of the two kids falling asleep seems so simple it goes rather unnoticed, but the underlying idea is this moment is the last real moment for Winfield and Ruthie to sleep in comfort at home. Perhaps, the role of the children here is to set up a last shred of normalcy and childhood concerns against the packing and burning of bridges by the adults.

Later, while attempting to be as adult as the situation demands and as adult as those around him, Winfield endeavors to make light of the dog being hit by a car saying, “’His guts was just strowed all over—all over’” only to throw up in disgust (132). The moment the dog is hit seems to be the end of the innocence for Ruthie and Winfield by reestablishing how the world and “progress” must move forward no matter what/who is in the way.

The touching final moment of the novel where Rose of Sharon allows the man to suckle on her breast is the moment I believe the two children may have most felt included in the adults. At that moment, Winfield and Ruthie were not being asked to leave the barn because they were too young to see what was to come but to allow privacy—the same as John, Pa, and even Ma did. In the final moments of the book, Winfield and Ruthie no longer have to be seen as the children because they were forced into an adulthood more uncertain than any.