rowled and quarreled over them, those hungry men; and they guarded with guns the land they had stolen...And it came about that owners no longer worked on their farms. They farmed on paper; and they forgot the land, the smell, the feel of it, and remembered only that they owned it, remembered only what they had gained and lost by it....Then such a farmer became a store keeper, and kept a store...And the owners not only did not work the farms any more, many of them had never seen the farms they owned.” This quote portrays the farm owners in California as evil. They don’t work the land anymore, nor do they even oversee it; they have people running the farms for them and they just see the money involved. They loose touch with what farming is really about: being in touch with the earth. Now all they see are the profits and the losses.The Joads’ vision of a California where people can freely pick fruit symbolizes the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve freely picked fruit. The family yearns for this type of place because this connection to the earth has been stripped from them since the bank took their land and the tractor destroyed their house.These symbols and archetypal images shown in the text demonstrate that The Grapes of Wrath is a romance novel. The family must travel across the United States to re-connect with the earth and live happily. This story is not the story of the Joads alone, for thousands of families made this journey during the Dust Bowl. They all suffered the same problems as the Joads, but to different degrees. Steinbeck helps illustrate the true intents of these migrant “Okies” in their Romantic quest to return to the Golden Age....
