Never cold. an'fruit ever'place, an' people just bein' in the nicest places, little white houses in among the orange trees [...] an' the little fellas go out an' pick oranges right off the tree. They ain't gonna be able to stand it, they'll get to yellin' so."(Steinbeck, 95) Their conviction is enhanced by the stories they hear and by false advertisements they are sent. These false advertisements may very well stand for the archetype of contemporary commerce which is dependent on advertisement. California may moreover be a symbol for America itself, which was once seen as a heavenly continent, an unspotted, holy land. Steinbeck thus drafts at once a story of migration and tries to settle and capture the archetypes of the modern world. The story thus focuses on the fall of human life from wholeness into fragmentation: "Carbon is not a man, nor salt nor water nor calcium. He...
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