Grapes of Wrath

Has anyone read Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck? What did you think of it? Did the end make you cry? I googled Tom Joad the other day and found a song called the Ghost of Tom Joad. The last few lines in the song come from the novel where Tom Joad says that he'll fight for justice right before he says goodbye to his mother for good. That was the part that made me cry mostly because he he was leaving his family for good. Can you imagine leaving your family for good? If I remember correctly his sister got into a fight with another girl and said her brother was in jail for beating up a guy and his mom was afraid people would tell the cops who would come looking for him so she told him to leave. It portrayed the lives of the migrants to California during the Great Depression. He was influenced by Preacher Casy who didn't act like a typical preacher because, in my opininion, of all the suffering he saw around him so he had a humanistic realistic view of people and the world. Even though Tom Joad was an ex-felon, he was willing to put himself in situations where he would break the law to help people who were being mistreated. Flash forward to present day. The Mexican workers are in the same situation so things havn't gotten better since the Joads' time. If you were to see the migrant camps, you'd find them despicable. They're made of shabby material. This country doesn't care about the migrant workers yet we know we can't live without them because we're not willing to pick our own fruits.