They drive out slowly through the town, in an endless line of soldiers and vehicles. Henry takes a turn sleeping, and shortly after he wakes, the column stalls. He finds that Bonello has given two engineer sergeants a ride, and Aymo has two girls in his car. Exhausted, Henry falls asleep again, and dreams of Catherine.That night, columns of peasants join the retreating army. In the early morning Henry and his men stop briefly at a farmhouse, eating a large breakfast. Soon, they continue slowly on their way, rejoining the line of trucks and soldiers.
Book III, Chapters 29-32
Aymo's car gets stuck in the soft ground; the men are forced to cut brush hurriedly to place under the tires for traction. Henry orders the two engineer sergeants riding with Bonello to help; afraid of being overtaken by the enemy, they refuse, and try to leave. Henry draws his gun and shoots one of them, but the other escapes. Bonello takes Henry's pistol and kills the wounded sergeant.
They begin to cut branches and twigs; in the end, they are unable to save the car. Henry gives some money to the two girls travelling with Aymo and encourages them to go down to a nearby village, Aymo gets in Henry's vehicle, and they set out, now cut off from the main column.
Crossing a bridge, Henry sees a nearby car full of German soldiers. As they travel, they begin to notice more and more signs of German occupation, and they worry that they have been completely cut off from Italian-controlled land. They proceed with caution; a sudden burst of gunfire kills Aymo. They realize he was shot by the Italian rear guard--the Italians are ahead, but because the rear guard is afraid, they are almost as dangerous as the Germans.
Fearing death, Bonello leaves in hopes of being taken prisoner. The men hide in a barn that night, and in the morning they rejoin the Italians. The enlisted men become furious with the officers, and Piani is afraid they will try to kill Henry. Suddenly, two men (battle police) seize hold of Henry. They seize Henry because he is a foreigner, and in the chaos of the retreat they intend to shoot him for a spy. When they look away for a moment, Henry dives into the river and swims away.
After floating in the river for what seems like a very long time, Henry climbs out, removes the stars from his shirt, and counts his money. He crosses the Venetian plain that day, then jumps aboard a military train that evening, hiding under a canvas with guns.
Lying under the canvas, Henry thinks about the army, about the war, and about Catherine. He realizes that he will be pronounced dead, and assumes he will never see Rinaldi again. Rinaldi has been concerned he will die of syphilis, and Henry worries for him. Exhausted and hungry, he imagines finding Catherine and going away with her to a safe place.
Book V, Chapters 38-41
That fall, Henry and Catherine live in a brown wooden house on the side of a mountain. They enjoy the company of Mr. and Mrs. Guttingen, who live downstairs, and they remain very happy together; sometimes they walk down the mountain path in Montreux. One day Catherine gets her hair done in Montreux, and afterwards they go to have a beer--Catherine thinks beer is good for the baby, because it will keep it small; she is worried about the baby's size because the doctor has said she has a narrow pelvis. They talk again about getting married, but Catherine wants to wait until after the baby is born when she will be thin again.
Three days before Christmas, the snow comes. Catherine asks Henry if he feels restless, and he says no, though he does wonder about his friends on the front, such as Rinaldi and the priest.
Henry decides to grow a beard and by mid-January, he has one. Through January and February he and Catherine remain very happy; in March they move into town to be near the hospital. They stay in a hotel there for three weeks; Catherine buys baby clothes, Henry works out in the gym, and they both feel that the baby will arrive soon.
Finally, around three o'clock one morning, Catherine goes into labor. They go to the hospital, where Catherine is given a nightgown and a room. She encourages Henry to go out for breakfast, and he does, talking to the old man who serves him. When he returns to the hospital, he finds that Catherine has been taken to the delivery room. He goes in to see her; the doctor stands by, and Catherine takes an anaesthetic gas when her contractions become very painful. At two o'clock in the afternoon, Henry goes out for lunch.
He goes back to the hospital; Catherine is now intoxicated from the gas. The doctor thinks her pelvis is too narrow to allow the baby to pass through, and advises a Caesarian section. Catherine suffers unbearable pain and pleads for more gas. Finally they wheel her out on a stretcher to perform the operation. Henry watches the rain outside.
Soon the doctor comes out and takes Henry to see the baby, a boy. Henry has no feeling for the child. He then goes to see Catherine, and at first worries that she is dead. When she asks him about their son, he tells her he was fine, and the nurse gives him a quizzical look. Ushering him outside, the nurse tells him that the boy is not fine--he strangled on the umbilical cord, and never began to breathe.
He goes out for dinner, and when he returns the nurse tells him that Catherine is hemorrhaging. He is filled with terror that she will die. When he is allowed to see her, she tells him she will die, and asks him not to say the same things to other girls. Henry goes into the hallway while they try to treat Catherine, but nothing works; finally, he goes back into the room and stays with her until she dies.
The doctor offers to drive him back to the hotel, but Henry declines. He goes back into the room and tries to say good-bye to Catherine, but says that it was like saying good-bye to a statue. He leaves the hospital and walks back to his hotel in the rain
CHARACTERS’ PROFILE
Frederic Henry - The novel's protagonist. A young American ambulance driver in the Italian army during the First World War, Henry is disciplined and courageous, but feels detached from life. When introduced to Catherine Barkley, Henry discovers a capacity for love he had not known he possessed, and begins a process of development that culminates with his desertion of the Italian army. Throughout the novel, the Italian soldiers under Henry's command call him "Tenente"--the Italian word for "lieutenant."
Catherine Barkley - An English nurse who falls in love with Frederic Henry. Catherine's fiancee was killed in the battle of the Somme before she met Henry. Catherine has cast aside conventional social values, and lives according to her own values, devoting herself wholly to her love for Henry. Her long, beautiful hair is her most distinctive physical feature.
Rinaldi - Frederic's friend, an Italian surgeon. Mischievous and wry, Rinaldi is nevertheless a passionate and skilled doctor. Rinaldi makes a practice of always being in love with a beautiful woman, and at the beginning of the novel is attracted to Catherine Barkley; Rinaldi's infatuation causes him to introduce Frederic and Catherine to one another.
Helen Ferguson - A friend of Catherine's. Though she remains fond of the lovers and helps them, Helen is much more committed to social convention than Henry and Catherine; she vocally disapproves of their "immoral" love affair.
Miss Gage - An American nurse. Miss Gage becomes a friend to both Catherine and Henry--in fact, she may be in love with Henry. Unlike Helen Ferguson, she sets aside conventional social values to support their love affair.
Miss Van Campen - The superintendent of nurses at the American hospital where Catherine works. Miss Van Campen is strict, cold, and unlikable; she is obsessed with rules and regulations and has no patience for or interest in individual feelings.
Dr. Valentini - An Italian surgeon who comes to the American hospital. Self-assured and confident, Dr. Valentini is also a highly talented surgeon. Frederic Henry takes an immediate liking to him.
Count Greffi - A spry ninety-four year old nobleman. Henry knows Count Greffi from his time in Stresa, and the two play billiards together toward the end of the novel. Despite his advanced age, the count is intelligent, disciplined, and fully committed to life.
Full Summary
Chapter One: Steinbeck begins the novel with a description of the dust bowl climate of Oklahoma. The dust was so thick that men and women had to remain in their houses, and when they had to leave they tied handkerchiefs over their faces and wore goggles to protect their eyes. After the wind had stopped, an even blanket of dust covered the earth. The corn crop was ruined. Everybody wondered what they would do. The women and children knew that no misfortune was too great to bear if their men were whole, but the men had not yet figured out what to do.
Chapter Two: A man approaches a small diner where a large red transport truck is parked. The man is under thirty, with dark brown eyes and high cheekbones. He wore new clothes that don't quite fit. The truck driver exits from the diner and the man asks him for a ride, despite the "No Riders" sticker on the truck. The man claims that sometimes a guy will do a good thing even when a rich bastard makes him carry a sticker, and the driver, feeling trapped by the statement, lets the man have a ride. While driving, the truck driver asks questions, and the man finally gives his name, Tom Joad. The truck driver claims that guys do strange things when they drive trucks, such as make up poetry, because of the loneliness of the job. The truck driver claims that his experience driving has trained his memory and that he can remember everything about a person he passes. Realizing that the truck driver is pressing for information, Tom finally admits that he had just been released from McAlester prison for homicide. He had been sentenced to seven years and was released after only four, for good behavior.
Chapter Three: At the side of the roadside, a turtle crawled, dragging his shell over the grass. He came to the embankment at the road and, with great effort, climbed onto the road. As the turtle attempts to cross the road, it is nearby hit by a sedan. A truck swerves to hit the turtle, but its wheel only strikes the edge of its shell and spins it back off the highway. The turtle lays on its back, but finally pulls itself over.
Chapter Four: After getting out of the truck, Tom Joad begins walking home. He sees the turtle of the previous chapter and picks it up. He stops in the shade of a tree to rest and meets a man who sits there, singing "Jesus is My Savior." The man, Jim Casy, had a long, bony frame and sharp features. A former minister, he recognizes Tom immediately. He was a "Burning Busher" who used to "howl out the name of Jesus to glory," but he lost the calling because he has too many sinful ideas that seem sensible. Tom tells Casy that he took the turtle for his little brother, and he replies that nobody can keep a turtle, for they eventually just go off on their own. Casy claims that he doesn't know where he's going now, and Tom tells him to lead people, even if he doesn't know where to lead them. Casy tells Tom that part of the reason he quit preaching was that he too often succumbed to temptation, having sex with many of the girls he Њsaved.' Finally he realized that perhaps what he was doing wasn't a sin, and there isn't really sin or virtue there are simply things people do.
He realized he didn't Њknow Jesus,' he merely knew the stories of the Bible. Tom tells Casy why he was in jail: he was at a dance drunk, and got in a fight with a man. The man cut Tom with a knife, so he hit him over the head with a shovel. Tom tells him that he was treated relatively well in McAlester. He ate regularly, got clean clothes and bathed. He even tells about how someone broke his parole to go back. Tom tells how his father Њstole' their house. There was a family living there that moved away, so his father, uncle and grandfather cut the house in two and dragged part of it first, only to find that Wink Manley took the other half. They get to the boundary fence of their property, and Tom tells him that they didn't need a fence, but it gave Pa a feeling that their forty acres was forty acres. Tom and Casy get to the house: something has happened nobody is there.
Chapter Five: This chapter describes the coming of the bank representatives to evict the farmers. Some of the men were kind because they knew how cruel their job was, while some were angry because they hated to be cruel, and others were merely cold and hardened by their job. They are mostly pawns of a system that they can merely obey. The tenant system has become untenable for the banks, for one man on a tractor can take the place of a dozen families. The farmers raise the possibility of armed insurrection, but what would they fight against? They will be murderers if they stay, fighting against the wrong targets.
Steinbeck describes the arrival of the tractors. They crawled over the ground, cutting the earth like surgery and violating it like rape. The tractor driver does his job simply out of necessity: he has to feed his kids, even if it comes at the expense of dozens of families. Steinbeck dramatizes a conversation between a truck driver and an evicted tenant farmer. The farmer threatens to kill the driver, but even if he does so, he will not stop the bank. Another driver will come. Even if the farmer murders the president of the bank and board of directors, the bank is controlled by the East. There is no effective target which could prevent the evictions.
Chapter Six: Casy and Tom approached the Joad home. The house was mashed at one corner and appeared deserted. Casy says that it looks like the arm of the Lord had struck. Tom can tell that Ma isn't there, for she would have never left the gate unhooked. They only see one resident (the cat), but Tom wonders why the cat didn't go to find another family if his family had moved, or why the neighbors hadn't taken the rest of the belongings in the house. Muley Graves approaches, a short, lean old man with the truculent look of an ornery child. Muley tells Tom that his mother was worrying about him. His family was evicted, and had to move in with his Uncle John. They were forced to chop cotton to make enough money to go west. Casy suggests going west to pick grapes in California. Muley tells Tom and Casy that the loss of the farm broke up his family his wife and kids went off to California, while Muley chose to stay. He has been forced to eat wild game. He muses about how angry he was when he was told he had to get off the land. First he wanted to kill people, but then his family left and Muley was left alone and wandering. He realized that he is used to the place, even if he has to wander the land like a ghost. Tom tells them that he can't go to California, for it would mean breaking parole. According to Tom, prison has not changed him significantly. He thinks that if he saw Herb Turnbull, the man he killed, coming after him with a knife again, he would still hit him with the shovel. Tom tells them that there was a man in McAlester that read a great deal about prisons and told him that they started a long time ago and now cannot be stopped, despite the fact that they do not actually rehabilitate people. Muley tells them that they have to hide, for they are trespassing on the land. They have to hide in a cave for the night.
Chapter Seven: The car dealership owners look at their customers. They watch for weaknesses, such as a woman who wants an expensive car and can push her husband into buying one. They attempt to make the customers feel obliged. The proffts come from selling jalopies, not from new and dependable cars. There are no guarantees, hidden costs and obvious flaws.
Chapter Eight: Tom and Casy reach Uncle John's farm. They remark that Muley's lonely and covert lifestyle has obviously driven him insane. According to Tom, his Uncle John is equally crazy, and wasn't expected to live long, yet is older than his father. Still, he is tougher and meaner than even Grampa, hardened by losing his young wife years ago. They see Pa Joad fixing the truck. When he sees Tom, he assumes that he broke out of jail. They go in the house and see Ma Joad, a heavy woman thick with child-bearing and work. Her face was controlled and kindly. She worries that Tom went mad in prison. This chapter also introduces Grampa and Granma Joad. She is as tough as he is, once shooting her husband while she was speaking in tongues. Noah Joad, Tom's older brother, is a strange man, slow and withdrawn, with little pride and few urges. He may have been brain damaged at childbirth. The family has dinner, and Casy says grace. He talks about how Jesus went off into the wilderness alone, and how he did the same. Yet what Casy concluded was that mankind was holy. Pa tells Tom about Al, his sixteen-year old brother, who is concerned with little more than girls and cars. He hasn't been at home at night for a week. His sister Rosasharn has married Connie Rivers, and is several months pregnant. They have two hundred dollars for their journey.