Cold Mountain

The combination of the two disastrous events led to more than 450,000 people who would eventually be forced to take the road in search of employment. These desperate migrant families, upon their arrival, frightened the established citizens of California and were labeled "Okies," a derogatory term referring to any outcast from the Southwest or northern plain states. .
             There is tension between the novel's rhetorical and narrative facts. Steinbeck writes about the migrants of the dust bowl, not for them; they do not have the income or leisure for reading such novels. Instead, Steinbeck writes for the middle class American. One of his goals is to educate those readers about the prejudice against people like the Joads. As soon as the Joads reach California, they are confronted with the epithet "okie" and an attitude that seems to back of the term. At one point in the novel a man a service station declares "Them goddamn Okies got no sense and no feeling. They ain't human They ain't a hell of a lot better than gorillas" (301). As victims of such injustice, the novel treats the Joads with nothing short of respect. They are depicted as a tightly knit, compassionate, and highly humanistic group of people (Railton 29).
             At the turn of the century, a growing interest in Marxism, socialism, or communism, was instilled in the oppressed working class of capitalism. By the end of the 19th century, America had become an industrial power and with the advent of the Spanish American War, and the World Wars to follow, America was to become a world military power. Domestically, however, a new awareness of the cost of this growth became a widespread theme in such works of literature as Stephen Crane's A girl of the Streets and Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. Such literature was often based on social motives, and became an influence on society (Owens 1). .
             In The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck's social philosophy is expressed primarily by Jim Casy, acted on by Ma Joad, and eventually realized by Tom Joad (CliffsNotes 10).