Grapes of Wrath: 5

In a short summary of chapter five of The Grapes of Wrath, the owners of the farm land came to speak to the farmers, mostly to tell them the bank is collecting the land and share cropping is no longer acceptable but mainly, they drive the farmers off the land. They try to reason with the land owners. They try to explain how hard it is and how they'll go hungry if they don't stay. The landowners do nothing but apologize and blame the banks. Then a man on a tractor comes, as per the instructions of the bank, to reclaim the land. The farmers soon recognize the tractor man as one of their town and call him out on working against his own people. However, he points out that he only cares of himself and his family in such hard times. The man on the tractor then does his job.

The main theme of chapter five is responsibility through different emotions. Steinbeck uses the chapter to show the responsibility through fear that the land owners have to the bank, the responsibility of the tenants to their families through worry, and the responsibility of the man on the tractor to both the bank and his family through willingness.

To depict the relationship of fear and responsibility, between the land owners and the bank, Steinbeck uses the following passage to explain. "We know that- all that. It's not us, it's the bank. A bank isn't like a man. Or an owner with fifty thousand acres, he isn't a man either. That's the monster." Through word use like "isn't like a man" and "monster", Steinbeck shows how the bank has instilled fear into the land owners, which has the effect of making them more responsible of their bank duties, in fear that the bank will do something bad to them if they don't.

To show the bridge between responsibility and worry, with the farmers and their families, Steinbeck uses the following quotations to show both. "But what'll happen to us? How'll we eat?", "But it's ours. How will we live without it?". Just by reading these sentences, the reader can feel the worry that the tenants are experiencing. The reader can also feel how the tenants decide to become responsible in anyway to feed their families, through any means necessary, if at all possible. They are responsible for their familes' wellbeing and worry that with the land owners here, soon that responsibility will become a lot harder to manage.

Finally, to show the connection between willingness and responsibility, of that between the bank and the man on the tractor, Steinbeck explains the tractor man's situation very clearly. The man on the tractor tells the families "Got to think of my own kids. Three dollars a day and it comes everyday." This depicts the tractor man's willingness to perform his responsibilities, even if that means going against his own people.

A common idea in this chapter is that of responsibility and how it can be connected to an emotion, as shown through Steinbeck's characters like the land owners, the bank, the tenants, and the man on the tractor.