Tom Joad

[iain]

Tom Joad seems like the protagonist of The Grapes Of Wrath, but he vanishes about 50 pages before the end of the book. Why would Steinbeck do this?

[Capnplank]

Ooh I just read this book a week or two ago and sort of wondered the same thing. All I could come up with was:
Tom Joad disappearing wasn't a real upper or downer ending, and from what else I've read of Steinbeck he really likes to end on a bittersweet note - it's not really a happy ending though there is something positive to be seen, and it's not an unhappy ending though it may be fairly bleak.
The other thing I could think of is that all throughout the novel characters are disappearing, as people would lose touch with friends and family and never come across them again. Such was the fate of the migrant workers, and Tom being a character we are very familiar with shows that every one of those people lost to history had a story just as full, and then *poof*

yet the lives of others go on without them.

[iain]

I was thinking it had some sort of parallel to the working class being forced from their homes, and simply leaving their communities.