In the Bible, there is the story of Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt and into the Promised Land. They experience many hardships over their sixty-year journey in the wilderness. The Joads" journey in The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, is a very similar journey. John Steinbeck uses allusion to the Bible to enhance the novel's meaning.
The similarity between the Joads" journey and the Israelites journey aids in enhancing the work's meaning. There was a great drought in the Midwest in the 1930s that made the soil there very dry and dusty. When winds came along they would pick the dust into the air and blow it all over the place. This made it so crops couldn't grow and it forced the people of Oklahoma off their land. This is similar to the different famines and miracles that Moses performed in Egypt to convince the pharaoh to let the Israelites go. On the Joads road to California, they meet terrible hardships including the deaths of Granma and Granpa and the abandonment of Noah. When they finally get to California, they are greeted with great prejudice and even violence from the Californians. Deputies come and burn down the Hoovervilles, kill any man that speaks out against them, and arrest any man that tries to organize the "Oakies" into revolt. "But you jus" camp in one place a little while, an" you see how quick a deputy sheriff shoves you along." Similarly, in the Bible, the Israelites are constantly persecuted, defeated by other nations, and are scattered after they had reached the Promised Land. The allusion to the Israelites isn't the only allusion in the novel, though.
Jim Casey is likened unto Jesus Christ in his unselfish sacrifice for Tom. Jim Casey used to be a preacher until he got the desire to have sex with a young girl after a meeting. He then left the community and told Tom, "I went off alone, an" I sat and figured." This is comparable to how Jesus would go out in the wilderness alone to get tempted by the devil.
