In Chapter 8, Ma says that if all people who are shoved off the land get mad together, they can take action.When asked by Tom if others are mad,...

Woven throughout the narrative of The Grapes of
Wrath by John Steinbeck is the concept of the Oversoul, a concept introduced
by Ralph Waldo Emerson.  This concept holds that every individual is connected with
every living thing in the universe. Jim Casy underscores this idea when he describes his
experience out in the wilderness after being asked to say grace at
breaksfast:

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"There was the hills, an' there was me, an' we
wasn't separate no more.  We was one thing. An' that one thing was
holy.

"An' I got thinkin', on'y it wasn't thinkin',...how
we was holy when we was one thing, an' mankin' was holy when it was one thing.  An' it
on'y got unholy when one mis'able littl fella got the bit in his teeth and run off his
own way, kickin' an' draggin' an' fightin'.  Fella like that bust the holiness.  But
when they're all workin' together, not one fella for another fella, but one fella kind
of harnessed to the whole shebang--that right, that
holy."

While a man is not
able to progress very far alone, with others he can achieve much.   Casy reiterates what
Ma has said, that with a fellowship of men, a fraternity, there is a holiness that
accomplishes something good.

This concept of the strength
of many together is what Ma expresses; she understands that in unity there is strength. 
When Tom, who has just arrived asks if others are "mad," "Many folks feel that way?" Ma
replies,

I
don't know.  They're jus' kinda stunned.  walk aroun' like they was half
asleep."

Ma's keen
observation indicates that people are shocked by the destruction of their homes by the
bulldozers and by their forced uprooting, suggesting that they may later
become "mean-mad," the way Pretty Boy Floyd did as she tells Tom, or they take action as
she hopes.