Held Captive by the Bank

     Chapter 5 in The Grapes of Wrath is a very sad, yet enlightening chapter in the life of the people during the time before the great Dust Bowl and also during the dust bowl.  One of the main themes of this chapter is reliance on the bank.  It says in the book, "the tenants, from their sun-beaten dooryards, watched uneasily when the closed cars drove along the fields," this shows that the tenants or the average home owner were used to the fact that the people all around them would most likely lose their homes due to not being able to scrounge around and find the money to pay the bank the money to pay their rent (31).  In this passage, Steinbeck clearly shows that during the late 1930s was a hard time for the Americans, because most families were farmers and there was not nearly enough rain to help with their crops.  When the drought came, many families were devastated that their crops would no longer grow and that meant that there would not be as much food for them and their families any longer.  Steinbeck would have done this to show that the people were so reliant on their crops for food and money, and now they were left with nothing but hope.  When the "closed cars" would show up the families knew that the men that would come out would be cold and merciless.  Even the bank owners were "slaves" to the bank, and they needed to do the bank's work so that they themselves do not become unemployed (32).  It seems as if the bank workers were afraid of the bank, due to their references of the bank being a "monster."  "We don't like to do it.  But the monster's sick," this reference is one of the many passages that prove that the people of the 1930s had to rely on the bank, and this is why the theme of chapter 5 of The Grapes of Wrath the reliance on the bank by the average person during the Dust Bowl (33).