Summary And Moorose Euphemisms In The Grapes Of Wrath

In this despondent selection of “The Grapes of Wrath”, Steinbeck uses simple and morose euphemisms to cover the awful truths that the “owner men” must deliver to the unfortunate tenants. Steinbeck illustrates that the owner men do all that they can within logic to separate themselves from the fact that these innocent people’s lives are ruined simply because they need a bigger profit margin. “And all of them were caught in something larger than themselves …These last would take no responsibility for the banks or the companies because they were men and slaves, while the banks were machines and masters all at the same time” (Steinbeck 21). Steinbeck describes the owner men as being in a situation beyond their control, where in reality they absolutely could have refused to ruin innocent people’s lives,

We don’t like to do it,”(22) is another example of the owners trying to separate themselves from the reacquisition of the land. The owner men, in their own self-centered pursuit of profit, grossly oversimplify their position to soften the burden on themselves of preaching about their own greed. “The tenant system won’t work any more. One man on a tractor can take the place of twelve or fourteen families.”(22). Although at first it seems logically sound that one man being paid is cheaper than twelve families, the reality of the situation is that they pay the current land tenants nothing, treating them as sharecroppers who live on the land to farm and then split the harvest with the banks that own the land, which in long term is a better investment for all parties than just the quick accumulation of funds the bank “needs”. “And now the owner men grew angry…No. The bank, the monster owns it. You’ll have to go.”(23) The fact that the owner men get angrier and angrier as the tenants keep questioning them on why they have to leave proves that the owner men and the banks are one in the same and it shows the flaw in the euphemistic logic they so sloppily