The monster that sent the tractor out, had somehow got into the driver’s hands, into his brain and muscle, had goggled him and muzzled him – goggled his mind, muzzled his speech, goggled his perception, muzzled his protest.
– John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 5. This passage conveys the loss of humanity of the tractor driver hired to bulldoze an evicted tenant farmer’s land. Rendered speechless and blind, his mind is unable to resist the harm he is doing to the tenant family. His capacity for moral outrage has been corrupted. It is as if he has been possessed by the tractor and the bank monster that sent it out. He has been corrupted by the system.