Monster Versus Man: The Bank’s Effect on the Population Affected by the Dust Bowl in Chapter V of John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath
In John Steinbeck’s classic novel The Grapes of Wrath, the reader follows a family on their path through the Dust Bowl, as they migrate to California, and attempt to survive the obstacles that stand in their way. His use of imagery, metaphor, hyperbole, juxtaposition, and other literary devices allow him to illustrate, and comment on the politics of, the struggle of the Dust Bowl through the Joad family. Specifically, his use of interchapters gives deeper meaning, and new perspectives to the issues he tackles with the Joads. In Chapter 5, an interchapter focused on the economic side to the Dust Bowl, he uses metaphor and imagery, to display to the reader some of the issues with banks, and the US economic system as a whole.
In chapter five, Steinbeck uses a dialogue to illustrate the situation the Joads were in. Instead of having two people talk to each other, the chapter sets it up as if a tenant farmers was talking to landowners. Not two people, but a conversation that landowners and tenants were having individually all the time, shown through the dialogue in a generalized way. He uses this to zoom out from the Joad family, and bring attention to the economic side of the crisis that was happening alongside the environmental disaster that was causing the Dust Bowl. The collapse of the banks due to the stock market crash, and locally to the story, lack of farmable land, and subsequent lack of agricultural commerce, played a huge role in the Dust Bowl, and the Great Depression as a whole. This shows the reader how the weather event, where an extreme drought coincided with strong winds for months on end, was actually not fully to blame for the hardships the Joads and similar families faced during this time.
Steinbeck’s use of the monster metaphor in chapter 5 helps the reader understand the gravity of the situation the tenant farmers have been put in by the banks. He uses a monster as a metaphor for the bank, which leads to his description of it as inhuman, ruthless, and out of grasp: “The bank is something else than men… It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it” (Steinbeck, 45). Then later, extensions of the monster, in the form of tractors, come to bulldoze the land that the tenants have held for generations, and are described as if they are bulldozing the people as well. The tenants see the tractor drivers as inhuman, as part of the machines they operate, and when one of the tractor drivers is recognized as a neighbor of the farmer, his excuse is survival. The property owners come to evict the tenants, and they are represented by the bulldozers as they push the people off of their land.
Imagery plays a large role in the description of the events in the chapter. Being an interchapter, it has deeper significance because it relates directly to the main story focusing on the Joads while simultaneously drawing a line to the real world events during the Dust Bowl and the role the bank and landowners played in the displacement of over 2 million people. The intricate descriptions he uses in this chapter connect with images used in later chapters of hopelessness and loss. The vivid description of the families and how they begged the landowners for mercy while the watched their homes flattened pulls the reader in through Steinbeck’s use of pathos. The language in the interchapter suits the tone; dark, hopeless, and depressed, and the description of the tenants illustrates their emotions and their thoughts, giving the reader more insight into not only the main characters but the interchapter characters as well.
Chapter 5 connects the story with the real world events, and also links the intercalary narrative to the main one. Steinbeck uses a multitude of literary devices to convey the feeling of hopelessness that the families he writes about felt to the reader, and simultaneously creating an exposition for the next chapter. His connections between the Great Depression, which affected the entire population of the United States, and the Dust Bowl, which comparatively affected approximately 2 million people, shed light on the economic side of story, and give the reader more background information to understand the Joad’s story.
Works Cited
Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. Penguin Books, 1992.
The Grapes of Wrath.” CliffsNotes, www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/g/the-grapes-of-wrath/critical-essays/use-of-literary-devices-in-the-intercalary-chapters-of-the-grapes-of-wrath.