Snubnosed monsters, raising the dust and sticking their snouts into it, straight down the country, across the country, through fences, through dooryards, in and out of gullies in straight lines. They did not run on the ground, but on their own roadbeds. They ignored hills and gulches, water courses, fences, houses.
– John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 5. Steinbeck uses an effective metaphor to compare the powerful tractors that rip through the tenants’ farms to "snubnosed monsters." Stopping for nothing and no one, they destroy all before them. This passage speaks to the inhumanity of the banks, which sent in the tractors.