"To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth..." So starts The Grapes of Wrath, one of the most popular books of the twentieth century. Written by John Steinbeck, it tells the tale of a family of Oklahomans en route to California, displaced from their land by the Great Depression. They find many troubles along their journey to "The Promised Land", including several cases of prejudice and other hardships. This book is rich in style, with many allusions and hidden meanings scattered throughout it's some 455 pages.
             The predominant theme of this book is one of man versus the machine. The Oklahomans have been displaced from their land by "The Bank." Whenever something goes wrong in this book, the bank is the one who did it. "He got his orders from the bank. The bank told him, 'Clear those people out or it's your job'" The bank is portrayed as the incredibly evil force behind the land re-possessions, when it really is not the bank's fault at all. It is just simple economics. When some service a business offers no longer becomes useful, then that service is discontinued. Same concept here. The land was no longer yielding good produce (Oklahoma is right in the middle of the dustbowel), so the bank decided it was no longer worth the effort to have it tended to. Another heavy theme in this book revolves around the large amounts of prejudice that is bantered between the "Okies" and the residents of California and other, more well-off people. The vagrant workers help each other a lot, pitching in and helping a family that is in more dire need then their own. No matter how poor the Joad family got, strangers were always welcome at their "door" (that is, their camp). Later in the book, at chapter 15, the Okies plight is recognized by people at the little diner, tryi...