Notes

In line with this menacing image, Steinbeck also characterizes the tractors as savage creatures, causing commotion with their invasive behavior whilst effortlessly traversing the natural formations of gullies, hills, gulches, and water courses, which is ironic seeing as though we are typically the ones at the mercy of nature yet the tractors can disregard the obstacles of nature completely.

Similar to the monstrous description of the tractor's engine and its effects, the transformation of the tractor driver into a monster is instigated by the bank that "had somehow got into the driver's hands and into his brain and muscle," which, along with the repetition of goggled and muzzled in "goggled his mind, muzzled his speech, goggled his perception, muzzled his protest," further strengthens the image of the bank as a parasite that consumes and transforms the driver entirely. Through this, we once again see Steinbeck reinforce the dehumanization of the tractor driver with his very intense, parasitic illustration of the monster's becoming.

1. It dehumanizes and villainizes the bank and its constituents through the parasitic description of the monster along with the robotic, controllable nature of the driver, which also
2. Depicts the relationship between the tractor driver and the bank as one of an owner and the enslaved, furthering our understanding of how powerless the tractor driver truly is.
3. And lastly, the metaphor illustrates the unstoppability of the tractors in their inhuman destructiveness; once again, touching upon the monstrous power of the tractor and driver, able to go against even nature itself.