The Grapes of Wrath Trivia
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106 free The Grapes of Wrath trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Grapes of Wrath trivia quiz covers John Steinbeck's 1939 novel from the Joads' Oklahoma farm to the flooded barn in California. The easy questions are the ones any student remembers: who Tom Joad is, where the family is heading and why, which highway they take, who Jim Casy was before he lost his faith, and what happens in the famous final scene. From there it moves into the interchapters, the turtle, the Hooverville and Weedpatch camps, the peach strike and Casy's death, and the family members who fall away along the road. The hard end covers the book's making and afterlife: the San Francisco News articles that fed it, the Sanora Babb notes Steinbeck read, why Carol Steinbeck deserves credit for the title, the Julia Ward Howe hymn and the Revelation verse behind it, the Kern County ban and the burnings in Salinas, the awards, the sales figures, and John Ford's 1940 film with Henry Fonda and Jane Darwell. There are also questions on the songs and stagings the novel inspired, from Woody Guthrie to Bruce Springsteen to the Steppenwolf production. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the novel, the film, Steinbeck and related subjects, and each question links to the page that establishes it. Fifty questions, free, with an explanation after every answer.
30 of 106 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Near which Oklahoma town is the Joad family's farm in The Grapes of Wrath?
Sallisaw
Sallisaw: when Tom returns home there from prison, he finds the farm deserted because the bank has evicted the family.
Q 02At the start of The Grapes of Wrath, Tom Joad has just been paroled from which prison?
McAlester
McAlester: Tom got out after four years of a seven-year sentence, but leaving Oklahoma with his family means breaking his parole.
Q 03What was Jim Casy's former occupation in The Grapes of Wrath?
Preacher
Preacher: Casy quit after deciding that 'there ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue', only things people do, some nice and some not.
Q 04The Joads make the journey west in what kind of vehicle?
A Hudson sedan converted into a truck
A Hudson sedan converted into a truck: it carries the family all the way to California, but the winter floods finally leave it stalled and useless.
Q 05Which highway do the Joads follow west to California in The Grapes of Wrath?
Route 66
Route 66: Steinbeck's line calling it 'the mother road, the road of flight' popularized the highway's best-known nickname.
Q 06Which Joad family member dies on the first evening of the journey west?
Grampa
Grampa: the family drugged him with soothing syrup to get him to leave, and Casy said he was really 'jus' stayin' with the lan''.
Q 07Granma Joad dies while the family is crossing which desert?
The Mojave
The Mojave: Ma kept Granma's death secret all through the night so the family wouldn't be held up before they got across.
Q 08Which eldest son leaves the family near Needles, planning to live off fishing on the Colorado River?
Noah
Noah: Pa secretly blamed himself for Noah's strangeness, since he had delivered him alone and pulled him out with his bare hands.
Q 09Rose of Sharon's husband, who abandons her soon after they reach California, is named what?
Connie Rivers
Connie Rivers: before vanishing, he says he should have stayed home to learn tractors, the very machines pushing tenant families off the land.
Q 10How is Rose of Sharon's name pronounced in the family?
Rosasharn
Rosasharn: heavily pregnant, she insists on going out to pick cotton, and when the rain comes she falls ill with a chill.
Q 11What lures the Joad family west to California in The Grapes of Wrath?
Handbills promising picking jobs
Handbills promising picking jobs: a returning migrant explains that a contractor wanting 800 pickers prints 5,000 of them, so crowds of jobseekers drive wages down.
Q 12Why does a local tractor driver in The Grapes of Wrath knock down tenant farmers' houses?
For three dollars a day
For three dollars a day: he has a wife and kids to feed, even though, as a tenant tells him, his wage costs whole families their homes.
Q 13What is Uncle John's private torment?
Q 21In The Grapes of Wrath's final scene, what does Rose of Sharon do for a starving stranger?
Feeds him her breast milk
Feeds him her breast milk: after one silent look between them, Ma herds everyone else out of the barn so her daughter can save the dying man.
Q 22Which animal's journey across a highway takes up one of The Grapes of Wrath's interchapters?
A land turtle
A land turtle: a truck driver swerves on purpose to hit it, but it only spins off the road, rights itself and crawls on.
Q 23Who suggested the title The Grapes of Wrath?
Steinbeck's wife Carol
Guilt over the death of his young wife
Guilt over the death of his young wife: when she complained of stomach pain, he told her she'd just eaten too much, and she died the next day.
Q 14The Joads' neighbour who refuses to leave the land even after everyone else is evicted is called what?
Muley Graves
Muley Graves: he hides out on his old land dodging the law, and when the Joads leave, Pa asks him to look after two of their dogs.
Q 15The clean, government-run camp where the Joads find respite is named what?
Weedpatch
Weedpatch: growers send men to start a fight at its Saturday dance so deputies can raid the camp, but the campers' own committee quietly foils the plan.
Q 16At the government camp, what startles the two youngest Joad children as they explore the washroom?
A flushing toilet
A flushing toilet: the camp's washrooms are looked after by the residents' own committee, which even tracks down who keeps using up the toilet paper.
Q 17The Joads work as strikebreakers picking which fruit when Casy is killed?
Peaches
Peaches: the strikebreakers earn a nickel a box, and once the strike is broken the ranch halves the rate to two and a half cents.
Q 18With what weapon is Jim Casy killed?
A pick handle
A pick handle: Tom wrenches the club away and kills Casy's attacker with it, then has to go into hiding.
Q 19Which child accidentally reveals that Tom is in hiding after killing a man?
Ruthie
Ruthie: during a quarrel with another child, she boasts that her brother has already killed two men, so Tom must leave to avoid capture.
Q 20What happens to Rose of Sharon's baby?
It is stillborn
It is stillborn: Uncle John sets the tiny body afloat in an apple box on the floodwater, hoping it will show people what is happening to them.
Steinbeck's wife Carol: he credited her drive behind the whole book, dedicating it 'To Carol who willed it'.
Q 24The Grapes of Wrath takes its title from a line in which song?
The Battle Hymn of the Republic
The Battle Hymn of the Republic: Julia Ward Howe wrote her verses in 1861 to fit the tune of the soldiers' marching song John Brown's Body.
Q 25In The Grapes of Wrath, what insulting name do Californians call the migrants from the Dust Bowl?
Okies
Okies: a man at a roadside camp tells Tom the word once just meant someone from Oklahoma, but in California it means 'you're scum'.
Q 26Where The Grapes of Wrath uses its title phrase, what is that chapter about?
Growers destroying food to keep prices up
Growers destroying food to keep prices up: as the hungry watch crops destroyed, 'in the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling'.
Q 27The Grapes of Wrath grew out of The Harvest Gypsies, seven 1936 articles Steinbeck wrote for which paper?
The San Francisco News
The San Francisco News: reporting for it, Steinbeck toured the camps with camp manager Tom Collins, to whom he later dedicated the novel in part.
Q 28Which writer, whose own migrant novel went unpublished until 2004, reportedly had 1938 field notes passed to Steinbeck?
Sanora Babb
Sanora Babb: once The Grapes of Wrath became a hit, her publisher shelved her novel, fearing the market couldn't bear two books on one subject.
Q 29Steinbeck said that with The Grapes of Wrath he had tried to rip what 'to rags'?
A reader's nerves
A reader's nerves: he also said he wanted to put 'a tag of shame' on the greedy men he blamed for the migrants' plight.
Q 30Which two prizes did the novel win in 1940?
The National Book Award and the Pulitzer
It was later cited prominently when Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize in Literature.