Ch. 16-19(F)

Tom Joad is a man with 2 key beliefs. One is that he believes California to be his saving grace for him and his family and that his family means very much to him. Because Tom believes so strongly in California, we can see that he is a persistent person. If he firmly believes in his goal, he will do everything he can to achieve it. In this case that means he will traverse 2000 plus miles in order to get his family to a new land in which they can live a better life. The way he single mindlessly goes to California despite all the rumors that people have said also goes to show that he is a person that is not easily dissuaded. He has proof that California needs worker and while others say that they could not find work, he goes ahead and continues to believe that there will be work because of his evidence. Tom is also very determined to make his way across California forgoing his losses in exchange for an increased pace. When Grampa dies, he continues after a short burial and a prayer wasting no tears. When his brother leaves his family, he is confused yet he does not pay it too much thought. He simply accepts and moves ahead. Just by knowing that Tom is a man that firmly believes that California is the place for his family we can induce that he is a man that has determination, and makes decisions not rashly.

What we can learn from how Tom loves and cares for his family show that he is a man with strong leadership skills and that he is also incredibly intelligent. When his mother gets into a fight with tom and his father, Tom realizes that he needs to back down and offer a more intelligent idea before someone ends up getting hurt. Thus he manages to calm down his mother and resolve the situation, showing leadership skills. He displays the care for his family with his leadership of how he quickly calmed down the situation. This situation also shows his intelligence and decision making skills. Here Tom had a choice, he could have kept on arguing with Ma and eventually someone would have gotten hurt. The first example of intelligence was how he recognized that someone would've gotten hurt if they had kept arguing. The second was that he chose to stop the argument thus preventing the damage from being done. This shows that Tom is an intelligent man with good decision making processes.