Symbolism in the grapes of wrath
...er also symbolizes the continuous struggles and obstacles that the Joads will have to deal with the entire novel. The Joads encounter many hardships such as being forced to leave their home, losing family members such as granpa granma and Noah, working for low wages, suffering from hunger, floods, and also mental hardships such as cruel prejudices in California. Like the turtle, the Joads refuse to give up on their American Dream and continue on with their journey. Another symbol of animals is Rose of Sharon’s " blue shriveled little mummy" (603). This shows the reader that long, painful journeys with many problems sometimes amount to nothing in the end. These journeys, however, must start somewhere and they usually begin with the farmers being evicted off their land. Chapter five discusses the tractors that came to the land to plow through it and destroy everything in their path. This chapter depicts the conflict between the tenant farmer and the banks. The banks want to take over the land for the almighty dollar, but it is very difficult for the farmers to leave the land that has been passed down generation to generation by their grandfathers who originally settled it. Machines exhibit a major use of symbolism in this chapter. The "cat" (60), or tractor, represents the bank and its faceless, nameless people taking over the "Okies" farmland. The tractors are inanimate, unemotional machines, just like the bank, dead to the real world showing no empathy for the needs of the people. The bank only cares about the money. Another symbol which is similar to the greed of the bankers, are the tractor drivers. The tractor drivers are normal people who used to live in Oklahoma amongst the people whose land he destroys. The drivers also have no emotion. They are described as "robots" (48) of the bank, doing anything the bank tells them to in order to make some extra money to put food on the table for themselves and their family. Possibly the most important symbols in The Grapes of Wrath is the grapes and the dust. The idea of grapes represents hope in the beginning of the novel. When Granpa talks about sitting in a tub of grapes and squashing them all over himself and letting the juice run down his face, it shows hi...