between the rich and the poor. With the biblical overtones of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" in which "the grapes of wrath" suggest the anger of God against those who worship the false god, Steinbeck implies that this false god is capitalism and the wrath is that of the oppressed migrant workers.

The syntax of many of the sentences is in the repetitious form of many of the Psalms of the Bible, as well as many of the chapters of the Old Testament.  For instance, Steinbeck writes of the panic of the owners as migrants multiply, beginning several sentences with the subject Men,

Men of property were terrified for their property.  Men who had never been hungry saw the eyes of the hungry.  Men who had never wanted anything very much saw the fare of want in the eyes of the migrants.  And the men of the town and of the soft suburban country gathered....

Further in the chapter, Steinbeck describes the great owners who take advantage of the migrants, hoping to reduce them to serfs.  Again, using a repeated syntactical structure, Steinbeck begins many sentences with and,

And this was good,....And wages went down and prices stayed up.  And pretty soon now we'll have serfs again.

And now the great owners...A great owner bought a cannery.  And when...And as cannery owner...And the little farmers who ....And then they too went on the highways.  And the roads were crowded....

With the extended allusion to Julia Ward Howe's "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," this chapter echoes the apocalyptic reckoning suggested earlier in Chapter 19. And, with the syntax of repetition and refrain, the biblical overtones are certainly apparent. 

The fundamental syntax of Chapter 21 is one where Steinbeck conveys the hunger and fear of those moving out West.  There is a basic despair that underscores both the writing and the action of chapter 21:

Men who had never wanted anything very much saw the flare of want in the eyes of the migrants.

The fear and underlying horror of losing what little one has is combined with the very little one wants.  This syntax conveys a situation where the fulfillment of basic human needs precludes all else.  The reaction of the Westerners to the new migrants also underscores how fear and cruelty feed off of one another.  Steinbeck goes to great lengths to bring out how the insignificant nature of human beings is something that is starting to take a toll.  Any human being at some point feels the need to lash out at continually being denied a voice:

On the highways the people moved like ants and searched for work, for food. And the anger began to ferment.

The word choice in descriptions like this one is deliberate.  Concepts of "movement" and the dehumanization that the continual state of affairs is causing to human beings, reducing them to "ants," is reflective of where the migrant farmer is at this point in time in the narrative.  Steinbeck's syntax is a stylistic device he uses to bring this out.

Chapter 29 of The Grapes of Wrath is an "inner" chapter and, therefore, short and lyrical in style.  It is also a Biblical-styled chapter, as it depicts the Great Flood that is used as counterpoint to the Dust Bowl chapters earlier.  Steinbeck makes use of pathetic fallacy (weather to depict emotional tone) as the apocalyptic weather is a kind of purgation--an excessive baptism that brings death across the land.

The chapter begins with much personification:

"...the gray clouds marched in from the ocean."

"...the wind...roared in the forests."

"the dry earth sucked the moisture down..."

"the steady rain whipped the shining water."

"the earth whispered under the beat of rain..."

Steinbeck's syntax is very much like that of Moses at the beginning of Genesis as he describes the Great Flood:

"I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish."

Steinbeck's style is plain, tough, and his tone is male and prophetic.  Sentences are a mix of simple and compound, and his word choice is simple: he uses high frequency (everyday) words.  He works in cause-effect mode, showing how nature affects humans.  The torrential rain brings sickness and death.  He names no one, only using "they," "people," "women," and "men."  He uses dialogue but without quotation marks, which gives the chapter an eerie quality.

All in all, Steinbeck is setting us up for the climax, forshadowing the Joads fighing for survival during the flood.  Also, his imagery foreshadows Rose 'a Sharon's breast-feeding the old man in chapter 30, as he focuses on "at last the mountains were full," "the dry earth sucked," "for two days the earth drank the rain."  The second to the last sentence mentions "wrath," (title) but it does not give a source (either God or nature).  Who is responsible for the wrath?  Finally, the chapter ends with a gleam of hopeful symbolism:

Tiny points of grass came through the earth, and in a few days the hills were pale green with the beginning year.

Steinbeck shows how the extreme vegetative cycle is complete: from famine to flood, from death to life.