Family Seperation

I think a good title for chapter 18 would be "Family Separation".
"I was afraid we wouldn' get acrost,' she said. ' I tol' Granma we couldn' help her. The fambly had ta get acrost.  I tol' her, tol' her when she was a-dyin'.  We couldn' stop in the desert."(pg 311)
This is important because it shows the increasing strength that Ma has and more importantly that she is so focused on keeping the family together.  She obviously loves Granma dearly, as shown when she stayed up all night with her dead body, but she had decided to keep moving towards California for the good of the family.  I think this is a main theme in this chapter because Ma is getting very sad by the family breaking up with Noah staying behind as well as the Wilsons, and Granpa dying earlier.  It also reflects the theme of people in general in the depression giving all they have into this hope of California, and the extents they will go to find work and stability.  It does this by using Ma to reflect the many American people, and using the family (Granma is this quote) as the things Americans sacrificed or had to lose.  I think the difference between knowledge and wisdom is that knowledge is more mental while wisdom involves action.  For example, you can know the right decision to make when choosing a color for your house, but when you actually paint your house with that color it is wisdom.