If anybody of anything is the antagonist in this story it is the banks and the companies that kick the people off of their land. The banks are characterized as the most evil thing in the world. They have no remorse, and they do anything to make some extra cash. They appear to be playing with human lives, and just making things harder for them. The bank is some sort of farm monopoly that can change wages as they please. They do not just change the wages for one farm, but they change if for all the farms. And they change the wages to an amount that can’t even supply food for one person. The banks are clearly the enemy. A tenant said “Grampa killed Indians, Pa killed snakes for the land. Maybe we can kill banks—they’re worse than Indians and snakes. Maybe we got to fight to keep our land, like Pa and Grampa did” (Steinbeck, 34.) They are making farming impersonal, and all of the characters have a problem with this. They say it is like a robot is in the tractor. “He could not see the land as it was, he could not smell the land as it smelled… and because of this he could not cheer or whip, or curse, or encourage himself. He did not own or trust or beseech the land… He loved the land no more than the bank loved the land” (Steinbeck, 35-36.) The bank is taking the land away from several people, and making one person work all of it. He goes and works all the land, and makes three dollars a day doing it. The tenant says this to the man, “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 the roads for your three dollars a day” (Steinbeck, 37.) The man then says that he has to think about himself. He needs the money for his family and he can’t get caught up in thinking about that. The bank is just simply ruining many farmers’ lives.
Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Penguin, 2006. Print.
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