The Grapes of Wrath Money Quotes

"Sometimes a guy’ll be a good guy even if some rich bastard makes him carry a sticker."

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 2. Tom Joad cleverly attempts to guilt the truck driver into giving him a ride. He challenges him to be the "good guy" and defy his "rich bastard" employer’s "No Riders" sticker instruction on the truck’s windshield. In other words the driver will be a bad guy if he doesn’t. Tom is appealing to the driver’s sense of humanity and decency. He is also suggesting that working class "good guys" like them should stand together against the rich and powerful "bad guys."

He knew he was being trapped, but he couldn’t see a way out. And he wanted to be a good guy. He glanced again at the restaurant. "Scrunch down on the running board till we get around the bend," he said.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 2. After first refusing a lift because of the "No Riders" sicker on the truck, the driver decides to disobey the company rule not to pick up passengers. In agreeing to give Tom a ride, the driver finds common cause with Tom’s fiercely independent spirit, by offering two fingers to the establishment – his employer. He doesn’t wish to be seen as a company tool. Instead he decides at Tom’s prompting to take the side of the common people and show kindness to the hitchhiker at the risk of losing his job.

If a bank or finance company owned the land, the owner man said, The Bank – or the Company – needs – wants – insists – must have – as though the Bank or the Company were a monster, with thought and feeling, which had ensnared them.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 5. Steinbeck uses a metaphor to compare the banks to monsters in their relentless drive for wealth. He sees them as evil and inhuman entities feeding on the labor, misery and misfortunes of tenant farmers. The bank is also personified here, as it is given human attributes – "needs – wants – insists."

Well, it’s too late. And the owner men explained the workings and the thinkings of the monster that was stronger than they were. A Man can hold land if he can just eat and pay taxes; he can do that. Yes, he can do that until his crops fail one day and he has to borrow money from the bank. But – you see, a bank or a company can’t do that, because those creatures don’t breathe air don’t eat side-meat.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 5. When farmers offer to rotate crops to make the land more profitable, the bank representatives are not interested. They characterize the bank as a monster that needs to continue making profits. In using the monster metaphor, the bank representatives absolve themselves of the personal responsibility for repossessing someone’s home.

And at last the owner men came to the point. The tenant system won’t work anymore. One man on a tractor can take the place of twelve or fourteen families. Pay him a wage and take all the crop. We have to do it. We don’t like to do it. But the monster’s sick. Something’s happened to the monster.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 5. Here we see the rise of the machines as the landowners decide to kick the sharecropper families off their farms and replace them with tractors. The tenant system is not working anymore, they say. One man on a tractor can do the work of many families, as efficiency and maximizing profits become the priority. The extended monster metaphor is used for the banks throughout Chapter 5. This enables the men who evict the tenants to blame the lack of humanity, not on themselves personally, but on some faceless inhuman bank monster that they have no control over.

And now the squatting men stood up angrily. Grampa took up the land, and he had to kill Indians and drive them away. And Pa was born here and he killed weeds and snakes. Then a bad year came and he had to borrow a little money. An’ we was born here. There in the door – our children were born here. And Pa had to borrow money then. The bank owned the land then, but we stayed and got a little bit of what we raised.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 5. When the landowners tell the tenant families that they must quit the land that they have been farming for generations, they react angrily. We learn that the bank got ownership of the land when the tenants had to borrow money in a bad year. But we should also note how the tenants acquired the land in the first place: they killed Indians and drove them off the land. It is ironic that the same thing is now happening to them.

The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 5. No longer a human being, the bank has become a Frankenstein monster that humans created but now cannot control. The bank representatives conveniently evade personal responsibility for the inhuman actions of their employer.

He loved the land no more than the bank loved the land. He could admire the tractor – its machined surfaces, its surge of power, the roar of its detonating cylinders; but it was not his tractor.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 5. The tractor driver is remarkably detached from the job of cutting up the repossessed farmland, performing it in a robotic way. He can admire the power of the great machine, but it’s not his tractor. And he feels no more love for the land than the banks, who are only interested in profit margins.

"Well, what you doing this kind of work for – against your own people?"
"Three dollars a day. I got damn sick of creeping for my dinner – and not getting it. I got a wife and kids. We got to eat."

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 5. The tenant farmer accuses the tractor driver of betraying his own class. The bank is paying the son of a local farmer to plough up the tenant farmer’s repossessed land. But the tractor driver explains that he has no choice, he must earn money to feed his wife and children.

"But for your three dollars a day fifteen or twenty families can’t eat at all. Nearly a hundred people have to go out and wander on the roads for your three dollars a day. Is that right?"
And the driver said, "Can’t think of that. Got to think of my own kids."

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 5. The tenant farmer excoriates the tractor driver for driving a hundred people to homelessness and hunger just to earn three dollars a day. He feels that what the driver is doing is a betrayal of his own class. But the tractor man asserts that his priority is his family’s welfare which takes precedence over the dispossessed tenant.

"Times are changed, don’t you know? Thinking about stuff like that don’t feed the kids. Get your three dollars a day, feed your kids. You got no call to worry about anybody’s kids but your own. You get a reputation for talking like that, and you’ll never get three dollars a day if you worry about anything but your three dollars a day."

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 5. The important themes of betrayal, money and hunger are illustrated in this speech from the tractor driver. He defends taking a three dollar a day job to tractor out tenant farms that have been repossessed in his neighborhood. The tenant farmer should go and do the same job and feed his own children, the tractor man advises him.

"I got orders wherever there’s a family not moved out – if I have an accident – you know, get too close and cave the house in a little – well, I might get a couple of dollars. And my youngest kid never had no shoes yet."

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 5. The tractor driver demonstrates his greed for a few extra bucks and his betrayal of his own people here. For a few dollars he is willing to do the dirty work of his bank employers and "accidentally" cave in a local tenant farmer’s house with the tractor. This shows how much he has been corrupted by the system, showing no humanity and thinking only of his own self-interest.

"An’ then I’d want to go in town an’ kill folks. ‘Cause what’d they take when they tractored the folks off the lan’? What’d they get so their ‘margin a profit’ was safe? They got Pa dyin’ on the groun’, an’ Joe yellin his first breath, an’ me jerkin’ like a billy goat under a bush in the night. What’d they get? God knows the land’ ain’t no good. Nobody been able to make a crop for years. But thems sons-a-bitches at their desks, they jus’ chopped folks in tow for their margin a profit. They jus’ cut ’em in two. Place were folks live is them folks. They ain’t whole, out lonely on the road in a piled-up car. They ain’t alive no more. Them sons-a-bitches killed ’em."

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 6. This quote demonstrates Muley Graves’ total attachment to his home, refusing to leave it even after his family is evicted. They headed off to California without him. The land holds too many old family memories for Muley: his father dying there, Joe being born, and fourteen-year-old Muley laying with his first girl. He angrily indicts the greedy and inhuman banks for killing his family for profit by tractoring them off their land. He now would like to kill them.

Those sons-of-bitches over there ain’t buying. Every yard gets ’em. They’re lookers. Spend all their time looking. Don’t want to buy no cars; take up your time. Don’t give a damn for your time. Over there, them two people – no, with the kids. Get ’em in a car. Start ’em at two hundred and work down. They look good for one and a quarter. Get ’em rolling. Get ’em out in a jalopy. Sock it to ’em! They took our time.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 7. Dehumanized by his runaway greed, the used car dealer lectures his employees on how to exploit customers. Seeing vulnerable migrants as easy money, he motivates his sales team to suck as much money as possible out of them. There is irony in the fact that even those not interested in buying a car are targets for his cynical sales pitch.

Listen, Jim, I heard that Chevvy’s rear end. Sounds like bustin’ bottles. Squirt in a couple quarts of sawdust. Put some in the gears, too. We got to move that lemon for thirty-five dollars. Bastard cheated me on that one. I offer ten an’ he jerks me to fifteen, an’ then the son-of-a-bitch took the tools out. God Almighty!

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 7. This entire chapter is about the theme of deception. It is a masterclass in how to cheat vulnerable families fleeing the Dust Bowl. Used car lot owners dupe desperate migrants into buying overpriced defective cars. A crooked business owner instructs his salesman to sell a "lemon" of a car with engine filled with sawdust to hide noisy transmissions.

God, if I could only get a hundred jalopies. I don’t care if they run or not…Christ, if I could only get five hundred jalopies!…Jesus, I wisht I had a thousand jalopies!

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 7. Steinbeck employs the literary device of repetition as he quotes the used car lot guy trying to make as much money as he can on his rust buckets. His greed only seems to grow as the sales go on. It is ironic that someone with no moral faith who is a cheat – "I don’t care if they run or not" – calls on God and Jesus to help him make more money.

Joe, did you know you was talkin’ to pikers?
I ain’t a piker. I got to get a car. We’re goin’ to California. I got to get a car.
Well, I’m a sucker. Joe says I’m a sucker. Says if I don’t quit givin’ my shirt away I’ll starve to death.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 7. There are many important themes in play here: the American Dream, California, money and starvation. Steinbeck also makes great use of irony. The used car lot owner is having a go at one of his customers, labeling him stingy and tight-fisted – a piker! He is trying hard to manipulate him into buying one of his defective, over-priced used cars. The customer wants to get to California which he believes to be an earthly paradise – the American Dream! The salesman engages in a bit of oversell, saying that he is a sucker who is loving his shirt. The irony is that it is the customers he is trying to sucker and steal their shirts.

Now, look here. I’m givin’ you my shirt, an’ you took all this time. I might a made three sales while I been talkin’ to you. I’m disgusted. Yeah, sign right here. All right, sir.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 7. The money-grabbing car dealer puts pressure on the customer to sign up for one of his rust buckets. He is being ironic when he says that he is giving away his shirt and is disgusted at the time the sale takes. It is more a case of the customer losing his shirt paying an exorbitant price for a jalopy, and us who are disgusted by the dealer.

That plow, that harrow, remember in the war we planted mustard? Remember a fella wanted us to put in that rubber bush they call guayule? Get rich, he said. Bring out those tools – get a few dollars for them. Eighteen dollars for that plow, plus freight – Sears Roebuck.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 9. The farmers sell off their belongings to second-hand dealers, who offer them pitifully low prices. They have no alternative but to accept, because they need the money to finance their trip to California. The plow and harrow were tools for survival and living, so it is ironic that during the war they were involved in the production of mustard gas, a type of chemical warfare used to kill people.
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