Analysis:

I finally finished The Grapes of Wrath for the first time.  Yet, not once in my public education was this suggested to me.  In a time with such strange dissent in this country, I felt it more applicable to modern day than ever before.  Perhaps not to such a scale as depicted in this book.  Regardless, by far my favorite except:

"The squatters nodded - they knew, God knew.  If they could only rotate the crops they might pump blood back into the land.
     Well, it's too late.  And the owner men explained the workings and the thinkings of the monster that was stronger than they were.  A man can hold land if he can just eat and pay taxes; he can do that.
     Yes, he can do that until his crops fail one day and he has to borrow money from the bank.
     But you see, 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.  If they don't get it, they die the way you die without air, without side-meat.  It is a sad thing, but it is so.  it is just so.
     The squatting men raised their eyes to understand.  Can't we just hang on?  Maybe the next year will be a good year.  God knows how much cotton next year.  And with all the wars -- God knows what price cotton will bring.  Don't they make explosives out of cotton?  And uniforms?  Get enough wars and cotton'll hit the ceiling.  Next year, maybe.  They looked up questioningly.
     We can't depend on it.  the bank--the monster has to have profits all the time.  It can't wait.  It'll die.  No, taxes go on.  When the monster stops growing, it dies.  It can't stay one size.
     Soft fingers began o tap the sill of the car window, and hard fingers tightened on the restless drawing sticks.  In the doorways of the sun-beaten tenant houses, women sighed and then shifted feet so that the one that had been down was now on top, and the toes working.  Dogs came sniffing near the owner cars and wetted on all four ties one after another.  And chickens lay in the sunny dust and fluffed their feathers to get the cleansing dust down to the skin.  In the little sties the pigs grunted inquiringly over the muddy remnants of the slops.
     The squatting men looked down again.  What do you want us to do?  We can't take less share of the crop--we're half starved  now.  The kids are hungry all the time.  We got no clothes, torn an'ragged.  If all the neighbors weren't the same, we'd be ashamed to go to meeting.
     And at last the owner men came to the point.  The tenants system won't work any more.  One man on a tractor can take the place of twelve or fourteen families.  Pay him a wage and take all the crop.  We have to do it.  We don't like to do it.  But the monster's sick.  Something's happened to the monster.
     But you'll kill the land with cotton.
     We know.  We've got to take cotton quick before the land dies.  Then we'll sell the land.  The plows'll go through the dooryard.
     And now the squatting men stood up angrily.  Grampa took up the land, and he to kill the Indians and drive them away.  And Pa was born here, and he killed weeds and snakes.  Then a bad year came and he had to borrow a little money.  An' we was born here.  There in the door--our children born here.  And Pa had to borrow money.  The bank owned the land then, but we stayed and we got a little bit of what we raised.
     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 like a man either.  That's the monster.
     Sure, cried the tenant men, but it's our land.  We measured it and broke it up.  We were born on it and we got killed on it.  Even if it's no good, it's still ours.  That's what makes it ours--being born on it, working it, dying on it. That makes ownership, not a paper with numbers on it.
     We're sorry.  It's not us.  It's the monster.  The bank isn't like a man.
     Yes, but the bank is only made of men.
    No, you're wrong there.  The bank is something else than men.  It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it.  The bank is something more than men, I tell you.  It's the monster.  Men made it, but they can't control it.
     The tenant cried, Grampa killed Indians, Pa killed snakes for the land.  Maybe we can kill banks--they're worse than Indians and snakes.  Maybe we got to fight to keep our land, like Pa and Grampa did.
     And now the owner men grew angry.  You'll have to go.
     But it's our, the tenant men cried. We----
     No.  The bank, the monster owns it.  You'll have to go.
     We'll get our guns, like Grampa when the Indians came.  What then?
     Well--first the sheriff, and then the troops.  You'll be stealing if you try to stay, you'll be murderers if you kill to stay.  The monster isn't men, but it can make men do what it wants.
     But if we go, where'll we go?  How'll we go? we got no money.
     We're sorry, said the owner men.  The bank, the fifty-thousand-acre owner can't be responsible.  You're on land that isn't yours.  Once over the line maybe you can pick cotton in the fall.  Maybe you can go on relief.  Why don't you go on west to California?  There's work there, and it never gets gold.  Why, there's always some kind of crop to work in.  Why don't you go there?   And the owner men started their cars and rolled away."

-John Steinbeck; The Grapes of Wrath