Archetypes In The Grapes Of Wrath

Who to Shoot For centuries, society has been obsessed with the concept of the monster archetype: from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to Braham Stoker’s Dracula. Society gravitates towards this black and white ideal, for when there is a monster, there must also be a hero to defeat it. This is explicated in chapter 5 of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, as the monster archetype is applied to the banks which transform into unassailable malisons toward the tenant farmers who do not have the knowledge necessary to challenge such beasts. Not only does the bank manipulate the farmers’ lack of knowledge, the bank does so in unethical and inhuman manners that should not have been tolerated. Steinbeck thusly sets the stage to further develop his portrayal
Specifically, the inhumanity comes down to how the men behind the bank have turned communities’ members against one another for survival. One tenant farmer experiences this first hand, when he finds the tractor driver is ““Joe Davis’s boy”” (47). In this revelation, what the tenant farmer points out to the man is the inhumanity of his action; the suffering he is forcing on his community. The tenant explicates this point by highlighting, ““But for your three dollars a day fifteen or twenty families can’t eat at all. Nearly a hundred have to go out and wander on the roads…”” (47). The essence of the tenant’s argument is that by the man working for the bank for a wage, he is working for the enemy and has disregarded their well-being. Basically the tenant farmer is calling Joe Davis’s boy a traitor, who supports the unethical tactics of the bank over supporting his own community. Ultimately, the tenant comes to an impasse questioning, ““But where does it stop? Who can we shoot?”” (49), as he struggles to find the true person to blame for his farm being taken away. In other words, the tenant is back to the bank again: the monster that he cannot shoot. Mirroring the first part of the chapter, the man responds to the tenants question with, ““Maybe there’s nobody to shoot. Maybe the thing isn’t men at all”” (49). Again the claim of the bank being an unassailable monster has come full circle, reaching the same conclusion as before: the bank is not made of men, it is merely a monster and the tenant farmer still lacks the knowledge to halt the monster. As a result of this lack of knowledge, the tenant can only stand and stare as his house comes crumbling down, curtesy of the inhuman money-mongering