Symbolic Foreshadowing Through Animals

The status of animals during the Depression were greatly analyzed throughout the narrative in John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. As the Okies made their way across the states, many references and motifs were used by Steinbeck in regards to animals. He used these to portray the real life hardships families were facing during this time. Just like this exhibit, Robert J. Griffin and William A. Freedman in their 1963 journal Machines and Animals: Pervasive Motifs in "The Grapes Of Wrath" go in depth about how these animals play a role in human life and the meaning behind the human condition in such a difficult period. Whether it was through the dog that ends up being brutally killed, or the abandoned cat waiting for its family to get home, or the turtle trying to reach the other side, Steinbeck uses the symbolic foreshadowing of these animals to portray the human behavior and condition. 

The journal article by Griffin and Freedman states that "Pets, then, serve as symbolic indices to human situations; and other animal symbols are used to excellent advantage. One of Stein beck's favorite devices is the use of epitome?the description of some object or event, apart from the main movement of the narrative, which symbolically sums up something central to the meaning of the narra tive. Toward the end of The Grapes of Wrath the migrants are gathered about a fire, telling stories, and one of them recounts an experience of a single Indian brave whom they were forced to shoot?epitomizing the indomitability and dignity of man, and foreshadowing Casy's fate" (575). 

Griffin, Robert J., and William A. Freedman. "Machines and Animals: Pervasive Motifs in" The Grapes of Wrath"." The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 62.3 (1963): 569-580.