The Dangers of Industrialization

Throughout the novel, the plight of the migrant farmers is repeatedly tied to the rise of industrialization, especially in the form of tractors. As the farmers are forced off of their land, they are regularly replaced by tractors driven by men who do not know the land and do not know how to care for the crops. The narrator never directly condemns industrialization as the primary cause, instead it is viewed as a divide between man, the earth, and other men. As tractors replace farmers, the old farmers lose their connection with the work of their hands, and they lose connection with their fellow farmers.

Later on in California, the chapters of authorial intrusion repeatedly blame the absorption of smaller farms into gigantic farms, tilled by machines and run by men who never touch their land. The separation between man and his land that is...