Land and Animals in GOW

In the book The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck, the author, uses the land and the animals. He gives them a role in the novel, uses them to control the Joad family, to show the time, to exhibit humanity. Steinbeck uses the land to show the time period, and how truly hard these time were for people, and he uses the animals to foreshadow what is to happen. People surrendered to the land. They knew that they couldn’t control it, they just had to try and harmonize with it. The animals showed them the way, metaphorically speaking. Without the land and the animals, Steinbeck's novel wouldn’t have been so compelling, or so relatable, and the Joads would have never made their journey westward.