And the dispossessed, the migrants, flowed into California, two hundred and fifty thousand, and three hundred thousand. Behind them new tractors were going on the land and the tenants were being forced off. And new waves were on the way, new waves of the dispossessed and the homeless, hardened, intent, and dangerous.
– John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 19. Steinbeck uses a metaphor to compare the flood of migrants to a huge, untoppable, dangerous wave flowing over California. Driving that wave are the tractors that force the tenants from their farms. There is an undercurrent of anger suggested here, with Steinbeck using words like "hardened, intent and dangerous."