"'I know,' Ma said. 'I jus' can't get it outa my head what store she set by a nice funeral. Got to forget it.'" (241).
When Grandpa died, the Joad family insisted upon giving him a proper burial and a prayer before they left him. The Joads were much more affected with his death, although along the road to California, they lost their empathy towards him and focused more on their survival. However, his death proved to be a lot more value than Granma's death. When Granma died, the whole family agreed to leave her at the coroner's office in Bakersfield, with no proper burial or a prayer. This idea of Granma's meaningless death is shown through Ma, who always made it seem as if family should be valued and stuck together until the end. Ma expresses a sense of guilt for leaving Granma in the coroner’s office, but she does not put up a fight with Pa in leaving her. Instead, she chooses to forget about leaving Granma and also forget how she would have wanted to be treated when she died. This reveals that the Joad family have created a distance between them, knowing that the family is not to resist when one desires to leave in the future, knowing that the group of their family left will be better off with less people to feed and less people to worry about. Since Ma is the foundation of the family and is the one who usually made the effort to keep the family together, her perspective in the family breaking up only encourages the Joads to lose faith in their family staying as one. Because Ma allowed Pa and her sons to leave Granma, she gives them the impression that she does not care if one person dies or leaves on their own. Ma sees that the less people they have to feed, the less money they will be spending. Instead of sticking to their morals and paying Granma with respect by even at least saying a prayer for her, the Joads load up their stuff and leave her.
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