The powerful images of The Grapes of Wrath In the Grapes of Wrath Steinbeck achieved an interesting effect by interrupting the narrative at intervals with short impressionistic passages recorded as if by a rapidly moving movie camera from one scene to another and from one focus to another. The novel is a powerful indictment of our capitalist economy and a harsh criticism of the Southwestern farmer for his recklessness in caring for his land. The most important feature of Grapes of Wrath is its photographically detailed, if sometimes sentimentalized, description of the American farmers of the Dust Bowl in the mid-1930s. Tom Joad was released from the Oklahoma State Penitentiary where he had been serving time for murder. a man in self-defense. He returned home through a region made barren by drought and dust storms. Along the way he met Jim Casy, a preacher; the couple went together to Tom's people's house. They found the Joad location deserted. While Tom and Casy wondered what had happened, Muley Graves, a diehard tenant farmer, arrived and revealed that all the families in the neighborhood had gone to California or were going. Tom's parents, Muley said, had gone to a relative's house before leaving for the West. Muley was the only sharecropper to stay. Throughout the southern Midwestern states, farmers, no longer able to make a living due to land banking, climate, and mechanical farming, had sold or been forced from the farms they had rented. Scrap dealers and used car dealers profited. Thousands of families journeyed to the promised land, California. Tom and Casy found the Joads at Uncle John's house busy preparing to leave for California. Father and Mother Joad were reunited for the trip; Noah, their mentally retarded son, Al, Tom and Noah's younger teenage brother, Rose of Sharon, Tom's sister and her husband, Connie; the Joad children, Rothie and Winfield, and Grandma and Grandpa Joad. Al had bought an old truck to take them west. The family asked Jim Casy to go with them. Spurred by fliers stating that farm workers were sorely needed in California, the Joads, along with thousands of others, made their meandering journey, in a worn vehicle across the plains into the mountains..