The Grapes of Wrath (32-36)

Pichu Big: "The Grapes of Wrath is a great classic! Let's join the students and read with them."
Pichu Little: "The reading feels a bit slow..."
Pichu Big: "Once you get accustomed to the language, the story moves more quickly. The story is very meaningful too!"

32) bolls

• Source 1: "The dark green plants stringy now, and the heavy bolls clutched in the pod" (Steinbeck 409).

• Definition: n. "the pod or capsule of a plant (as cotton)" (Merriam-Webster).

• Source 2: "Among these are cotton stainers, bugs of the family Pyrrhocoridae that damage cotton by feeding on the seed bolls and leaving indelible stains in the harvested crop."
• Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. "Bugs need symbiotic bacteria to exploit plant seeds: Mid-gut microbes help insects in processing their food." ScienceDaily, 9 Jan. 2013. Web. 10 Jan. 2013.

• Commentary: Bolls usually describe pods of cotton plants because cotton has been an important cash crop since the invention of the cotton gin and the development of the textile industry. Steinbeck's description of the cotton and Pa Joad's familiarity with cotton picking reflects the farmers' universal reliance on such cash crops, leading them to be familiar with handling it even across the country.

33) zygote

• Source 1: "Here is the anlage of the thing you fear. This is the zygote" (Steinbeck 151).

• Definition: n. "a cell formed by the union of two gametes; broadly : the developing individual produced from such a cell "(Merriam-Webster).

• Source 2: "The resulting fertilized egg, or zygote, is diploid because it contains two haploid sets of chromosomes bearing genes representing the maternal and paternal family lines" (241).
• Campbell, Neil A., and Jane B. Reece. Biology. AP 7th ed. San Francisco: Pearson, Benjamin Cummings, 2005. Print.

• Commentary: Zygotes are significant in life science because it is the basis of all multicellular orginisms such as plants, animals, and fungi. It is an important stage in reproduction, where the offspring first begins to develop.

34) beholden

• Source 1: "'There's no beholden in a time of dying,' said Wilson, and Sairy echoed him, 'Never no beholden'" (Steinbeck 139).

• Definition: adj. "being under obligation for a favor or gift : indebted" (Merriam-Webster).

• Source 2: "'Perhaps if politicians read more they might not be so beholden to the expedient,' writes Shougat Dasgupta."
• Thirani, Neha. "Newswallah: Long Reads Edition." India Ink: Notes on the World's Largest Democracy. The New York Times, 30 Dec. 2012. Web. 10 Jan. 2013.

• Commentary: Wilson and Sairy support a significant theme in The Grapes of Wrath, insisting that there is never any debt in the moment of death. This is an example of the many moments in which the migrants join together and support each other in times of crisis; the less they have, the less the migrants have and the more they have lost, the more united they become.

35) haycock

• Source 1: "An' purty soon they was a haycock" (Steinbeck 329).

• Definition: n. "a somewhat rounded conical pile of hay" (Merriam-Webster).

• Source 2: "Behind a haycock in Provence / Cormac and I -- / We repose vertically in a Ford sun / Cooled by a De Lillo breeze / Analysing the universals of light, / The particulars of power."
• Durcan, Paul. Greetings to Our Friends in Brazil. Great Britain: Harvill Press, 1999. Google Books digital file.

• Commentary: Steinbeck reveals the importance of this moment by illustrating the union created by the two people. Like a haycock, they are identified as a single object and the individual parts become more difficult to identify, similar to a piece of hay in a haycock.

36) fly

• "He was buttoning his fly as he came, and his old hands were having trouble finding the buttons, for he had buttoned the top button into the second buttonhole, and that threw the whole sequence off " (Steinbeck 77).

• Definition: n. "something attached by one edge: as ... a garment closing concealed by a fold of cloth extending over the fastener" (Merriam-Webster).

• Source 2: "For his work, Morgan selected a species of fruit fly, ... a common, generally innocuous insect that feeds on the fungi growing on fruit" (276).
• Campbell, Neil A., and Jane B. Reece. Biology. AP 7th ed. San Francisco: Pearson, Benjamin Cummings, 2005. Print.

• Commentary: In the sources, the word is employed with a completely different meaning. One refers to a type of garment, while the other is the name of an animal. Before reading The Grapes of Wrath, I had not seen it utilized in the manner Steinbeck did; previously I had encountered it most commonly referring to the animal. However, people button several varieties of flies everyday, especially in jeans.

Works Cited

Source 1: 

Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Penguin, 1992. N. pag. Print.

Definitions:

"Definitions and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary." Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 06 Jan. 2013.