End of the Road
American roads were one of the few supports available to refugees such as the Joads. After the loss of farms, savings, and even family members, roads were one of the only means of survival that remained relatively firm and constant. Without highways like 66 and 99, the exodus of the Joads and others like them may not even have been possible. As Steinbeck explains in The Grapes of Wrath:
"The people in flight from the terror behind - strange things happen to them, some bitterly cruel and some so beautiful that the faith is refired forever" (122).