Joad's Journey in The Grapes of Wrath Throughout history, man has made many journeys, far and wide. Moses' great march across the Red Sea and Columbus's crossing of the Atlantic are examples of just a couple of great voyages made by men. Even today we take great journeys. Terry Fox's run across Canada as he battles cancer is one such journey. In each of these cases people had to rise above themselves and overcome enormous difficulties, similar to a salmon swimming upstream to fill its lifeline completely. Intense drive and extreme fortitude are qualities they must have possessed throughout their travels. In The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck illustrates the resistance of the Joads with his use of extended metaphors in the intervening chapters. Steinbeck uses intercalated chapters to provide background to the novel's various themes. He effectively prefigures future events by recounting the general state of the local population in the intercalated chapters. He then narrows it down to how it affects the main characters in the novel, who are the Joads. Establishing the tone of the novel in the reader's mind is another function of Steinbeck's intercalated chapters. In chapter three, Steinbeck flawlessly describes a land turtle's long, tedious journey across a desolate highway. From the beginning of his journey, the turtle encounters many obstacles. Along the way ants, hills and oak seeds hinder him under his shell. The turtle's determination to reach its destination is most evident when a truck driven by a young man swerves to hit the turtle. The turtle's shell is cut open and it flies off the highway, but the turtle doesn't stop. He laboriously returns to his belly and continues to drive towards his goal, just as the Joads continue to drive towards their goal. Just like the turtle in chapter three, the Joads have faced many great hardships throughout their travels. The plains of Oklahoma, with their harsh summer climate, were Joad's desolate highways. The truck driver represented Californians, who buried food and killed livestock to keep the Joads and others like them from their dream. And their ants and their hills were diseases. Despite all this, the Joads persevered. They were driven by two great motivating forces, poverty and hunger. Just as the tortoise searched for food, the Joads searched for paradise, "The Garden of Eden"..