Bank of the West
The Bank of the West is the unseen, impersonal force that sets the tragedy of The Grapes of Wrath in motion. It is not a character in the conventional sense but a corporate entity that owns the land the Joads and their neighbors have worked for generations. The bank acts through local agents and the Farmers' Association, dictating wages and evictions with a cold, mathematical logic that no individual can resist. It embodies the transformation of American agriculture from a system of family farms to an industrialized, absentee-owned enterprise, and its presence looms over every stage of the Joads' journey, from the initial eviction to the wage cuts in the peach orchards.
Nature and Structure
The Bank of the West is described as a "monster" that is "something more than men." The owner men who come to evict the tenants explain that the bank "isn't like a man" and that "a bank or a company can't do that, because those creatures don't breathe air, don't eat side-meat. They breathe profits; they eat the interest on money." This dehumanizing logic means that even the men who work for the bank are trapped: "It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it." The bank is not a single villain but a system that has ensnared its own agents, making them "slaves" to a master that demands constant growth. The bank's power extends through the Farmers' Association, which sets wages across entire regions. When Mr. Thomas, a small farmer, tries to pay his workers thirty cents an hour, the bank's representative tells him, "The wage is twenty-five now. If you pay thirty, it'll only cause unrest." The threat is explicit: if Thomas does not comply, he will lose his crop loan for the next year.
Aims and Methods
The bank's primary aim is profit, pursued with a single-mindedness that overrides all human considerations. It does not care about the land itself, only the income it generates. The owner men explain that the bank "can't wait" for a good year; it "has to have profits all the time. It can't stay one size." This relentless drive leads to the eviction of entire communities. The bank replaces tenant families with tractors, reasoning that "one man on a tractor can take the place of twelve or fourteen families." The tractor driver, a local boy named Willy Feeley, is himself a victim of this system, forced to destroy the homes of his own neighbors for three dollars a day. The bank's methods are not violent in themselves, but they create violence: they starve families, break up communities, and set the stage for the vigilante attacks and labor conflicts that follow.
Key Actions and Consequences
The bank's most direct action is the eviction of the Joads and their neighbors. The tenant men are told, "You'll have to get off the land. The plows'll go through the dooryard." When Grampa Joad threatens to resist with a rifle, the tractor simply pushes the house off its foundation, and the family is left with no choice but to leave. The bank's influence extends into California, where it controls the Farmers' Association and, through it, the wages paid to migrant workers. At the Hooper ranch, the bank's logic is fully realized: the pay for picking peaches is cut from five cents a box to two and a half cents, a wage on which a man cannot feed his family. The bank's system creates a surplus of desperate laborers, ensuring that wages stay low and that any attempt to organize is met with violence. The bank is the ultimate cause of the strike that leads to Jim Casy's murder and Tom Joad's second killing, and it is the reason the Joads end up flooded out of a boxcar, with Rose of Sharon's baby stillborn.
Development and Significance
The Bank of the West is never seen directly, but its presence is felt throughout the novel. It is the force that turns the land into a commodity, the family into a unit of labor, and the migrant into a vagrant. The novel's intercalary chapters make clear that the bank is not an isolated evil but the logical outcome of an economic system that values profit over people. The bank's actions are the cause of the "grapes of wrath" that fill and grow heavy in the souls of the dispossessed. The bank represents the "I" that cuts itself off from the "we," the possessive individualism that Steinbeck sees as the root of the social crisis. Its power is immense, but the novel suggests that it is also brittle: the bank is a monster that must constantly grow or die, and its repression only strengthens the unity of those it oppresses. The Bank of the West is the embodiment of the system that the Joads and their fellow migrants must ultimately confront and overcome.
