"You can be workin', layin' in a little money, if we don' ketch up with ya," said Tom "An' suppose we all jus' lay aroun' here..."

 

This is one of the thousands of excerpts of conversation in Steinbeck's book that is both grammatically flawed and poorly spelt.  He writes this way for effect, to enhance the characters he writes about, and to preserve the truth of the time period.  Western migrants wouldn't be talking to each other with perfect grammar, so Steinbeck writes just the way the people would talk.

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"The chair legs hit the floor. "Do't you go a-sassin' me.  I 'member you.  You're one of these here troublemakers."  "Damn right," said Tom. "I'm bolshevisky."

 

When Tom Joad states that he is "bolshevisky", it alludes to the Bolsheviks, who were members of Lenin's party during the Russian Revolution (Lenin was the father of Russian communism).  This enhances the lower class spirit of revolution, because they need to be communistic in their actions in order to successfully revolt agaisnt the upper class.  More allusions come directly one page 206.

 

"If you could separate causes from results, if you could know that Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin, were results, not causes, you might survive."

 

All of the above men were revolutionaries, as the instilled heretic ideologies into different environments.

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As mentioned in the Symbolic and Allegorical Section of this website, the turtle represents the spirit of the lower class: they are constantly striving for what seems like a distant and impossible goal.  It doesnt seem to daunt them, but they are often knocked off course by powers and forces that are immensly stronger than them (like the police, weather, etc)

 

 

"The two men squat on their hams and the women and children listen.  Here is the node, you who hate change and fear revolution.  Keep these two squatting men apart; make them hate, fear, suspect each other.  Here is the anlage of the thing you fear.  This is the zygote.  For here "I lost my land" is changed; a cell is split and drom its splitting grows the thing you hate-"We lost our land" 206

 

This passage is huge.  A scientific theme is used to convey the coming together of two things (unification, if you will).  Node, anlage, and zygote and underlined on this copying (not in the book) to make it easier to spot the metaphor.  The message is simple.  This is the time in the novel where two groups or families are coming together to form one being, to help, assist , and care for each other.  A zygote is formed when two gametes come together.  A node is the intersection, or meeting, or two lines on a graph, and an anlage runs along those same lines. The author further conveys the metaphor of unification by using the 'from I to we' diction.