Chapters 1-10 assignment E. Personification

Steinbeck is a great writer and as a great writer he uses a lot of personification in Grapes of Wrath .His personifications are very much related to land, property and machinery. In chapter 5 the bank comes over to a families house and tells them they are being evicted. The family is devastated and the man who works for the bank wont take the blame for having to evict the family. The bank becomes personified as a monster.

“if a bank or a finance company owned the lands then owner man said, if 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”(32).

The bank is being personified as a monster which if we say monsters were alive then we are giving an thing the ability to breath and think. The bank is just the bank made up by man who at the time might have been corrupt or were just doing their job. Monster was the label but behind the label was the feeling of how people truly felt about the bank. They new that a bank itself could not breath and think but the people in the bank the people who work for the bank and with the bank were the real monsters the true enemies. “Men made [the bank], but they cant control it”(33).

After the man from the bank leaves a tenant comes by to plow the land. The tenant and the father of the family has a conversation about the tenant betraying his people and plowing the land. they get into an argument about the land:

“but let a man get property he doesn’t see, or cant take time to get his fingers in, or cant be there to walk on it—why, they the property is the man. He cant do what he wants, he cant think what he wants. The property is the man, stronger then he is. And he is small, not big. Only his possessions are big—and he’s the servant of his own property” (37).

This literally says that the property is mean meaning it is giving all the characteristics of a man to a peace of property. The man owns the property and he is in charge of the land but during these times the farmers could do nothing with the land because it was so died and dry. The land hold up better then the man does and the land might not be big but it is stressful. This makes sense because on page 32, when the bank is taking away the land the farmer argues about the land: “ you know what cotton does to the land; robs it, sucks all the blood out it…if they could only rotate the crops they might bump blood back into the land (32).

This personification of the land and crops show how the people treat the  land as if is was human, as if it was their child. Cotton cannot rob the land and suck blood out of it. Blood is not even in land but it connects to human because that’s what makes us alive a run with blood and if a human body has no blood then it just dies like the land has died.

This shows the relationship between the banks, the property and the people . the property is taken owned by the man taken away by the monster all because its dead. this can also show the blame theme because the people blame the land and the banks but the people that work for the bank blames the bank itself and the people and so it is a circle of blame that no one takes responsibility for.