Swimming in the river

Illustration of the men as they swim in the river from The Grapes of Wrath, vol.1 p.249, illustrated edition, by Thomas Hart Benton, a native of eastern Oklahoma, who was assigned to draw archetypal Oklahomans for 20th Century Fox as the studio believed that would make the casting more accurate. "They took off their clothes in the willows and then they walked into the water and sat down. For a long time they sat, holding themselves with heels dug into the sand, and only their heads stuck out of the water." "Each man sat in the water and felt the tug of the current."