· This novel follows the movement of thousands of men and women and the transformation of an entire nation, plus it focuses more on the Dust Bowl migration in the 1930s.
             · The character in this novel, Jim Casy rejects his role as a preacher due to the fact that it separates him from the people, and he thinks only of the holiness of "the people."(virtue of equality)
             · The landowners and the banks force the tenant farmers off their lands despite the farmers' protestations, that they have nowhere to go, nothing to eat, and the crops will be better next year, however they do first inform the farmers that they must leave.
             · Large companies buy all the land in the area, and force the tenant farmers away in order to cut their labor costs.
             · Since the tenant farmers' lands are cut off and they have no chance in Oklahoma, they decide to travel to California(the promised land) for further opportunities.
             · In order to travel to California the farmers have to buy cars and pawn a few of their belongings; the crooked business was being done at overcrowded used car lots as the farmers try to buy cars, and even worse the business morality of the pawn brokers fleece the farmers for everything they can.
             · People who live in the West do not understand what has happened in Oklahoma and the Midwest; what began as a thin trickle of migrant farmers has become a flood.
             · When the farmers reach California they are not offered any jobs, and are treated cruelly; in fact they tell them there is no work in California, and despite the handbills-wealthy farmers who need 800 workers print 5000 handbills, which are seen by 20,000 people who come looking for jobs.
             · The farmers in California are labeled with the derisive nickname "Okies."
             · California once belonged to Mexico, but was soon taken by hungry American squatters, who eventually learned that they owned the land because ...