The Grapes of Wrath begins with a man walking down the center of a lonely highway. He walks up to a store and asks a man for a ride on his truck. Even though the man has a sign that he can't have any riders, he gives the guy a ride. The hitchhiker is on his way to his dad's place. The driver notices that the man has been swinging a pickaxe or sledgehammer, and the man goes ahead and admits that he was in jail for killing someone. The man lets him out and drives off quickly.

Tom begins walking to the forty acres that his dad sharecrops. He sees a man sitting on the ground singing and stops to talk. The man is Tom's old preacher, who says he no longer has the calling. Tom remembers the man's famous sermons where he...