Americans' growing interest in, and aversion for, communism as an alternative to capitalism is central to Steinbeck's story of two Communist organizers in the California farming country. Steinbeck looks at what he has called the "human" side of communism: how the people who turn to communism as an answer to society's woes are accepted by others, why they are motivated to act as they do, and what impact they may have on others.
As he does in The Grapes of Wrath (1939), Steinbeck deals ironically with the myth of the Promised Land: California appears as a paradise from afar, but within its gardens men must struggle to maintain bare existence. That circumstance gives Steinbeck opportunity to examine the social injustices.....
