Rosasharn's gesture in the closing lines of the novel can be considered a completion of the life cycle, an act that reaffirms the themes of re-birth and survival. In giving a part of herself to a stranger, she experiences a spiritual movement that extends beyond herself and unifies her with the vast human family. This act also recalls the Christian ritual of Holy Communion in which the body and blood of Christ is shared among believers. More strongly, it illustrates the culmination of what Peter Lisca has called the "education of the heart": The development from a inward focus on nourishment and self-sacrifice for the protection of the family to an awareness that we are all part of a larger community in which life-giving resources are shared.
A loss of immediate family seems to be a prerequisite to understanding one's place as part of a global community in which all persons are a part of one great soul. Casy, the first to consciously understand this concept, was never part of a family unit. He begins by wondering "what they is for a fella so lonely?" and finds the answer in joining together with all men and all women. Likewise, Tom reaches this understanding when he is permanently isolated from his family. He tells Ma that even if he cannot regain contact with his own family, he will survive because he is now part of the large family of humanity. Just as the truck, a symbol of the vitality of the family throughout the narrative, is flooded and rendered useless, by the end of the novel, there is virtually nothing left of the Joad family. Yet it is at this moment that they will be forced to put into action Ma's accepting statement that their responsibility extends beyond immediate relations, "Use'ta be the fambly was fust. It ain't so now. It's anybody. Worse off we get, the more we got to do." Rose of Sharon's gesture, expressed to a man who reminds us of Granpa, unifies the Joad family as they initiate their membership in the vast human family.
