How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
If a bank or finance company owned the land, the owner man said, The Bank – or the Company – needs – wants – insists – must have – as though the Bank or the Company were a monster, with thought and feeling, which had ensnared them. (5.3)
Do we ever meet a landowner or a banker or a businessman in this novel? Do you feel like we get a balanced picture of the situation? Is our narrator biased?
Quote #2
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. (5.11)
By attributing blame to a monster, to an inhuman thing, it makes it easier for the landowners to do inhuman things.
Quote #3
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. (5.13)
The tenant farmers try to reason to the landowners. There's no money to be had anywhere in the community. Everyone is down and out. If everyone is down and out, it's no one particular family's fault. There's a larger problem that can't be blamed on the individual tenant families