Of Mice And Men Greed Analysis

Being married to a career often allows one to acquire a great deal of money. Most people are able to make a decent living by thriving off of their routine-esque job, yet the people who thrive off of change are the ones who seem to make the most amount of money. Whether it be out of jealousy or legitimate concern for how such mass amounts of money was acquired, money and wealth in general seems to have a negative connotation in most fables. Money often is viewed as a corrupter, with avarice being one of the seven deadly sins. Though greed is often associated with the upper class, Steinbeck points out that the greed is not exclusive to it. Humanity tends to think of those less fortunate being “rich in heart,” Steinbeck flips this thought-process on its head by unleashing

Lee is not explicitly rich in money, though he is rich in debt, though does not hassle those who owe him money for the money. However here Lee is, running up the prices for Mack and the boys, because they are using frogs for currency, and no other store would accept that. Since Lee has a monopoly here, the greed slowly creeps into the atmosphere, corrupting Lee into being this manipulative monster proving that absolute power corrupts absolutely, no matter what. What makes greed even more horrible is how people will try to justify it. In The Grapes of Wrath, as bankers are forcing families off the land that they lived on and had lived on for generations before, one of the bankers remarks rather flippantly, “[The bank’s] the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it” (33). The bankers are trying to wipe the blood off of their own hands and shift the blame onto something else. However, that something else is a man made thing, and the statement is true on many levels. Humans did create the bank, much as humans created greed, and it seems as if there was never any control of either