snakes (of, resembling, or relating to) adj.: ophidian
The implication is clearly that the land should belong to those who work it: “Grampa killed Indians, Pa killed snakes for the land,” writes Steinbeck, assuming the collective voice of Tom Joad and his generation. Steinbeck saw no irony in the farmers’ staking their claim to the land on their having cleared it of its previous human and ophidian inhabitants via genocide. (Eva Resnikova, “Grapes of Wrath,” National Review, 6/11/1990.)
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