ines primarily responsible for forcing the families to migrate, they also directly cause several deaths, requiring each character affected to dig into his/her capacity to suffer and endure. The machines also represent the widening inhumanity of the Depression years. "Tom sees the 'No Riders' sticker on the tractor as an example of how inhuman machinery has become" (McElderry Jr., 128). Ironically, when the Joad's meet at the beginning of their journey, they must meet at the truck, which is seen as the only "real" thing left, since the house has been demolished. The truck was never meant to be of any real significance in the first place, for it is another machine.As each event progresses, we see Steinbeck using animals and nature intertwined with these events to depict people and things, and to foreshadow things to come. One example of these descriptions is the reference to Muley Grave's sex drive in his younger days, when "he describes his first experience as 'snorting like a buck deer, randy as a billygoat" (McElderry Jr., 130). Then, when moths are circling the fire, they are referred to as being like farmers circling a town, looking for opportunity and waiting to enter. The animals are used even to foreshadow death, be it the Joad's dog or Rose of Sharon's baby, by the circling of buzzard's overhead. So the use of symbolic content goes. Although Steinbeck created this highly acclaimed world of symbolism, it is not without its faults, at least according to some interpretations. He goes to great lengths to convey life of the migrant farm workers of the 1930's, in terms of universals and the more of the time, but unfortunately, some found his conclusions far too artificial. "Complete literalness in such matters doesn't necessarily simulate life in literature" (Sillen, 4). The dispute here is whether or not Steinbeck is attempting to over-glorify the attempts of the migrants. Many Midwesterners did feel quite a bit of harshn...
