Tortilla Flat Drugs and Alcohol Quotes

Some people call alcohol "liquid courage," and this is a great example of the guys getting drunk in order to do something difficult (that is, sign up for the army). Are they actually that courageous? Should they be enlisting in the army? Are alcohol-fueled decisions ever good ones?

Steinbeck's giving us a science of drunkenness here. Remember those graduated flasks from chemistry? They're marked with lines to measure the liquid inside. These wine jugs are sort of like that. Steinbeck says you can measure emotions according to how much wine has been drunk. The stages of sentimentality and depression depend on the amount of wine you've downed. Considering how much these dudes drink, it's no surprise that they spend a lot of time depressed.

Pilon's at his best here. He's trying to figure out a way to justify not giving Danny wine as a substitute for rent money (he wants the wine for himself). And of course he does find a way. Suddenly, he's aware of the dangers of alcoholism, and he wants to "save" his friend from drinking the wine. That's irony, people. Of course, none of the gang knows any "restraint in drinking," so we can see that Pilon is just blowing smoke.

Even though this sentence comes at the end of Pilon's comical justification for keeping the wine for himself, it's also an example of foreshadowing. The idea that someone will die from the abuse of wine gets implanted into our brains, and since we're talking about Danny, we get an inkling that he's in danger. And guess what? That's pretty much how it's all going to go down.

Grappa is a sort of liquor made from grapes, so the friends are having a real treat, a break from their usual wine. This moment occurs just after Danny has forgiven his friends for burning down his house, so we can see the social function of alcohol in the novel (it brings people together). By sharing his drink with his friends, Danny shows his generosity. Also, the fact that these dudes are all drinking together shows that they're comrades.

Wowser: Big Joe is a real boozehound. This is one of the first descriptions we get of the actual addiction to alcohol that pervades the novel. Whereas before it had all been fun and games, now we're seeing that Big Joe can't even react until he's had three glasses of wine (that's a lot), and that he's already thinking about the next drink before he finishes his first one. We're getting toward the tragic end of the novel, and this warns us that things may not turn out very well for the friends.

Jesus Maria's story about the old man who wanted to attempt suicide in order to get a girl's attention but accidentally went undiscovered and died provokes some nervous laughter in the guys. This might be because they recognize themselves in the old man: if any of them were to go missing, everyone would probably assume they were just drunk, since they usually are. This is another little warning of the dreary ending to the novel. It also shows that extreme acts—like a faked suicide—can end in tragedy just as easily as they can end happily.

Danny is down in the dumps, and the only way that Pilon can even begin to bring his friend back is by pumping wine into him. This gives us the idea that Danny's personality is so tied up in alcohol that you can't separate the two. Drunk Danny is the only Danny, and when he hasn't had a drink, he's lost his sense of self.

In a last-ditch effort to save their friend, the friends actually push Danny over the edge. They realize that Danny seems to wake up with wine, so they decide to have a crazy party that will get him trashed and bring him back from his depression. Alcohol is equated with life in this plan. Let's see how that works out.

Even though wine was what ultimately got Danny killed (he went over the edge of the gulch in a drunken rage), the friends remember his drinking habits as a happy part of his personality. They drink to remember him and revise history a little bit, saying that wine made him happy.