A rattlesnake crawled across the road and Tom hit it and broke it and left it squirming.
– John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 18. As the Joads descend into the beautiful San Joaquin Valley, Tom Joad goes out of his way to kill a rattlesnake on the road with the truck. The serpent symbolizes and foreshadows the evil that the Joads will encounter in California’s Garden of Eden.