Hero - The Grapes of Wrath

Unfortunately picking the hero of The Grapes of Wrath was a lot harder than picking it for The Old Man and The Sea.  There really was no clear cut hero in this book.  Nobody did anything amazing that put them beyond everybody else.  You could make a case that the mother, (Ma Joad), was the hero because she kept the family together, but I believe that Tom was the hero in this book.  He was undoubtedly the protagonist throughout the book and he also kept his family going during the story.
Tom Joad at the beginning of the story is portrayed as a scary man who just got out of prison.  At the beginning you felt that he was mean, and was on the verge of doing something bad to somebody.  As the book goes on he changes into a sympathetic man who lives in the present.  If you look at the book, Tom really does not accomplish anything spectacular, that would put him as the hero in the book.  One thing that he does that helps the family out tremendously is that Tom is the first one to find work at the weedpatch camp.  "They's things you know, they's stuff you're sure of.  Tom's got work, an' he'll come in this evenin'.  That's true." (Steinbeck, 324.)  Even though this may not seem like a big deal, it is a huge deal to the Joad family, because now they have a source of income.  Also, along the journey, Tom fixes the car multiple times, and keeps the family moving along.  I would say that Tom represents goodness and he is a strong-minded individual.  Even though he did come out of prison for killing a man, Tom is a character that does things that help the family out.  He is very nice to the people he comes in contact with, and throughout the story he keeps the family going, through the good and rough times.  He is one of those characters that the audience likes to hear from.

Bibliography

Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Penguin, 2002. Print.