If someone reads this book and does not catch the obvious bias against banks and businesses, then they must have not read chapter seven, because that is what the whole chapter is about. At first, when it is describing all of the signs that the car lot has like “Good Used Cars. Cheap transportation, three trailers. ’27 Ford, clean, Checked cars, guaranteed cars. Free radio. Car with 100 gallons of gas free,” it sounds like this would be a nice place to buy a car, but that is what I would call, wrong (Steinbeck 61).
There are still car salesmen today, and most people do not trust them to give them a good deal, so hopefully they thought this back then too. Who knows though, they could be some of the honest, polite salesmen.
It all looks good until the main car salesman starts using phrases like “They look good for one and a quarter. Get ‘em rolling. Get ‘em out in a jalopy. Sock it to ‘em! They took our time,” then it’s obvious they are just in it to make money, even if it means screwing people out of a honest, hard earned dollar (Steinbeck 61).
These salesmen are making some serious money off of people because so many families are coming to buy cars so they can drive themselves to California, and even though they could turn some sales for a hundred dollars profit for them, they want even more. The one deal that the salesman does make in the chapter, he said that he paid $78.50 for it, so he ended up bullying the man into giving him fifty dollars up front, a contract for forty dollars, which he would pay off by ten dollars a month, and two good mules with a cart that he said he might be able to get ten dollars out of. Then, after the deal was done, it was revealed to the reader that they got the car for only thirty five dollars and the mule team could go for at least seventy five dollars (Steinbeck 64). The man ended up making one hundred and thirty dollars on one deal, which was a good chunk of money back then. Sounds like some real quality characters.
Steinbeck, John, and Robert J. DeMott. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Penguin, 2006. Print.
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