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60 free The Grapes of Wrath trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 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.
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Q 01In which year was The Grapes of Wrath published?
1939
It was the best-selling book of that year in the US, with 430,000 copies printed by February 1940.
Q 02The Joads' home farm is near which small Oklahoma town?
Sallisaw
Drought, the Dust Bowl and bank foreclosures push the family west.
Q 03At the start of the novel, Tom Joad has just been paroled from which prison?
McAlester
He had been convicted of homicide but insisted he acted in self-defence; leaving the state breaks his parole.
Q 04What was Jim Casy's former occupation before he lost his faith?
Preacher
Steinbeck based this Christ-like figure on his friend, the marine biologist Ed Ricketts.
Q 05The Joads make the journey west in what kind of vehicle?
A Hudson sedan converted into a truck
They load their remaining possessions onto it at Uncle John's place.
Q 06Which highway do the Joads travel on to California, a road the novel helped christen the "Mother Road"?
Route 66
It ran 2,448 miles from Chicago to Santa Monica.
Q 07Which member of the family dies on the first evening on the road?
Grampa
The family had drugged him with soothing syrup to make him leave; Casy says he was really "just stayin' with the lan'".
Q 08Granma Joad dies while the family is crossing which desert?
The Mojave
She had lost her will to live after her husband's death.
Q 09Which eldest son leaves the family near Needles, planning to live off fishing on the Colorado River?
Noah
Injured at birth and described as "strange", he is the first to drift away.
Q 10Rose of Sharon's husband, who abandons her soon after they reach California, is named what?
Connie Rivers
He is nineteen and overwhelmed by marriage and impending fatherhood.
Q 11How is Rose of Sharon's name pronounced in the family?
Rosasharn
She is eighteen, pregnant at the start, and grows into a mature woman by the end.
Q 12The family patriarch's full name, given in the novel, is what?
William James
Pa Joad is also named Tom, which is why the protagonist is named after his father.
Q 13What is suggested to have been Ma Joad's maiden name?
Hazlett
Her given name is never learned in the novel.
Q 14What is Uncle John's private torment?
Q 21What happens to Rose of Sharon's baby?
It is stillborn
Malnutrition is implied; Ma forces the family through the bereavement.
Q 22In the novel's final scene, Rose of Sharon does what for a starving stranger in a barn?
Feeds him her breast milk
A silent understanding passes between her and Ma before she goes to him.
Q 23Which animal, in one of the interchapters, struggles across a dusty road as a symbol of the migrants' persistence?
A land turtle
The interchapters are short vignettes describing the wider setting, not the Joads directly.
Guilt over the death of his young wife
He is prone to binges with alcohol and prostitutes but generous with his goods.
Q 15The Joads' neighbour who refuses to leave the land even after everyone else is evicted is called what?
Muley Graves
The family leave two of their dogs with him.
Q 16The clean, government-run camp where the Joads find respite is named what?
Weedpatch
Run by the New Deal Resettlement Administration, it protected migrants from local deputies but offered no work or food.
Q 17The real federal migrant facility south of Bakersfield that inspired the novel's clean, well-run haven was officially named after which nearby town?
Arvin
It became the prototype for the entire federal migrant labour camp programme.
Q 18The Joads work as strikebreakers picking which fruit when Casy is killed?
Peaches
The morning after his death, the plantation halves the pay rate.
Q 19With what weapon is Jim Casy killed?
A pickaxe
Tom kills one of the attackers, is injured by the other and goes into hiding.
Q 20Which child accidentally reveals that Tom is in hiding after killing a man?
Ruthie
The twelve-year-old lets it slip while quarrelling with another child.
Q 24Who suggested the title The Grapes of Wrath?
Steinbeck's wife Carol
Steinbeck had unusual difficulty finding a title while writing at his home in what is now Monte Sereno.
Q 25The title comes from a line in which song?
The Battle Hymn of the Republic
Julia Ward Howe's lyric in turn refers to Revelation 14:19-20 and the winepress of the wrath of God.
Q 26The hymn behind the title was written by Julia Ward Howe, adapting which soldiers' song, and sold to The Atlantic Monthly for $4?
John Brown's Body
Her husband Samuel Gridley Howe was one of the Secret Six who funded John Brown.
Q 27The phrase "grapes of wrath" appears in the novel itself at the end of which of its 30 chapters, describing the destruction of food to keep prices high?
25
"In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage."
Q 28The novel grew out of The Harvest Gypsies, a series of seven articles Steinbeck wrote in 1936 for which newspaper?
The San Francisco News
The articles were republished in 1938 as the pamphlet Their Blood Is Strong, with Dorothea Lange's photographs.
Q 29Steinbeck is known to have drawn on the 1938 field notes of which writer, whose own migrant novel was shelved until 2004?
Sanora Babb
Her supervisor Tom Collins shared her reports; Whose Names Are Unknown finally appeared a year before her death.
Q 30Steinbeck told his editor the book had how many "layers", of which a reader "won't find more than he has in himself"?
Five
The letter went to Pascal Covici at Viking Press three months before publication.