Capitalism and the Land

A theme that really resonates in the book for me is the relationship between men and women and the land. This relationship is revealed perhaps most clearly and interestingly in chapter 5, one of Steinbeck’s “interchapters”.

What resounds most in this chapter is the sentiment of estrangement from the land felt by the imagery and the story presented in this chapter. Steinbeck depicts a man whose job it is to operate a tractor and plow the land that was formerly worked by the hands of the previous small farming tenants. The tractor as a machine acts as a barrier between the man and the land that is alienating and devoid of human emotion. Steinbeck underscores the inhumanity of the man by describing him: “The man sitting in the iron seat did not look like a man: gloved, goggled, rubber dust mask over nose and mouth, he was part of the monster, a robot in the seat.” The “monster” in this passage is a reference to the tractor he is operating. Steinbeck goes on to describe the estrangement of man to the land he is working: “his feet did not stamp the clods or feel the warmth and power of the earth.” The chapter uses interesting metaphors of surgery and rape to describe the contact between the machine and the land in contrast to the hands of men. By making the comparison between performing surgery and farming, the reader gets a clinical and sterile association to the operation, not one of “warmth and power.” Perhaps more illuminating is the comparison between this form of mechanized farming and rape. Seeding the ground is no longer an expression of love or comparable to an act of consensual intercourse, however, it is described violently, without human emotion, unnatural: “Twelve curved iron penes, erected in the foundry, orgasms set by gears, raping methodically, raping without passion.” The chapter creates a contrast between this detachment and exploitation of the land and the former tenant who is defending his home and right to stay on the land. When pleading the man to spare his home, he proudly says, “I built it with my hands…It’s mine. I built it.” There is a sense of pride and ownership attached to his property that was born out of direct contact of his hands that is absent in the work of the man and the tractor.

Throughout this chapter Steinbeck effectively gives the reader an impression of the inhumanity of this sort of capitalistic manner of treating farmland and the immorality of the transference of small farmers to the takeover of corporate farmers and banks. Steinbeck reveals the barriers created by these forces and institutions between men and the land they exploit, depriving them of pride and ownership.