"THE GRAPES OF WRATH"

In Chapter Nine, we learn that the farmers are forced to sell their valued possessions for next to nothing. If they can't sell them.... they burn them. There isn't enough room or storage space to bring their things with them when they leave.

When everything that could be sold was sold, stoves and bedsteads, chairs and tables, little corner cupboards, tubs and tanks, still there were piles of possessions; and the women sat among them, turning them over and looking off beyond and back, pictures, square glasses, and here's a vase.

The rest? Leave it—or burn it up.

The women sat among the doomed things, turning them over and looking past them and back. This book. My father had it. He liked a book. Pilgrim's Progress. Used to read it. Got his name in it. And his pipe—still smells rank. And this picture—an angel. I looked at that before the fust three come—didn't seem to do much good. Think we could get this china dog in? Aunt Sadie brought it from the St. Louis Fair. See? Wrote right on it. No, I guess not. Here's a letter my brother wrote the day before he died. Here's an old-time hat. These feathers—never got to use them. No, there isn't room. How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past? No. Leave it. Burn it.