A grasshopper flipped through the window and lighted on top of the instrument panel, where it sat and began to scrape its wings with its angled jumping legs. Joad reached forward and crushed its hard skull-like head with his fingers, and he let it into the wind stream out the window.
– John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 2. When a grasshopper flies into the cab of the truck, Tom Joad has a different response than the driver, who pushed a bee back out the window after it flew in. Tom’s violent nature springs into action as he crushes the grasshopper’s head. The grasshopper is symbolic of just how unjustly and inhumanely migrants are treated when they move west to California – they are crushed by the landowners and banks.