PART TWO - THE DESERT

SECTION TWENTY-SEVEN (Pages 122-125)

Summary

Three days later, the girls hear footsteps at the front door and there is Dad. He is mean and angry, swinging at them and demanding they tell him where their mother is. He pulls over the china cupboard and breaks all the dishes inside. He breaks chairs across the dining room table and then finally finds Mom in the bathtub. They wrestle and fight and eventually they both have knives in their hands. Dad tells her she's a hell of a woman, and she tells him he's a stinking, rotten drunk. Then, Dad laughs and says that he knows that.......

Notes

Dad has broken his promise, but once again the family finds a way to.......

PART THREE - WELCH

SECTION ONE (Pages 129-132)

Summary

The family takes off in the Oldsmobile which they named the Piggy Bank Special, but it isn't a name that makes it special since Dad says it's such a heap, it doesn't deserve a name. It breaks down the first time an hour shy of the New Mexico border, but Dad gets it running again. The second time it breaks down, Dad gets it limping along at never any more than fifteen or twenty miles an hour. They sleep inside of it every night, and when they arrive in Muskogee, Oklahoma late at night, they park on a.........

Notes

This first section of the third part of the book is full of metaphorical ideas: the car which is so beat up and old that it won't go any faster than twenty miles an hour represents the family and how their lives unfold; the laughing Okies, who are stereotypically down and out, but who laugh at the poor conditions of the.......

 

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