And now a light truck approached, and as it came near, the driver saw the turtle and swerved to hit it. His front wheel struck the edge of the shell, flipped the turtle like a tiddly-wink, spun it like a coin, and rolled it off the highway.
– John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 3. While the woman driver goes out of her way to avoid striking the turtle, the truck driver doesn’t. We learn in a simile how the animal is flipped "like a tiddly-wink" as the driver cruelly and deliberately hits it. The truck incident is a metaphor for the people who want to hurt the Joads and other migrant workers and is foreshadowing of the inhumanity that they will meet on their journey west.