Chapter 20

The beginning of chapter twenty is filled with very descriptive imagery. It adds to the book a gloomy and desolate outlook. John Steinbeck describes the camp the Joad's come to in great detail. The reader can just see almost exactly what the camp looks like, the people in the camp, and the scenery of the camp.

"There was no order in the camp; little gray tents, shacks, cars were scattered about at random. The first house was nondescript. The south wall was made of three sheets of rusty corrugated iron, the east wall a square of moldy carpet tacked between two boards, the north wall a strip of roofing paper and a strip of tattered canvas, and the west wall six pieces of gunny sacking. Over the square frame, on untrimmed willow limbs, grass had been pile, not thatched but heaped up in a low mound. Next to the shack there was a little tent, gray with weathering, but neatly properly set up; and the boxes in front of it were placed against the tent wall. A stovepipe stuck out of the door flap, and the dirt in front of the tent had been swept and sprinkled. And next there was a huge tent, ragged, torn in strips and the tears mended with pieces of wire. The flaps were up, and inside four wide mattresses lay on the ground. A clothes line strung along the side bore pink cotton dresses and several pairs of overalls. There were forty tents and shacks, and beside each habitation some kind of automobile."

The imagery of this scene adds desolation and depression to the tone of this book. Each tent or shack is made up of random materials that the families had to use. Their intent is to survive now, and they accomplish this by any way possible. Shacks and tents made out of paper, cloth, leaves, and junk yard materials create a poor and desolate setting. It is sadly ironic that in such a beautiful state, such as California, filled with luscious land and fruit, that camps, such as Hoovervilles, exist nearly everywhere one goes. The setting of this chapter, and the entire book, continues one of the major themes of this book, depression.