Soften ’em up, Joe. Jesus, I wisht I had a thousand jalopies! Get em’ ready to deal an’ I’ll close ’em.
Goin’ to California? Here’s jus’ what you need. Looks shot, but they’s thousan’s of miles in her.
Lined up side by side. Good Used Cars. Bargains. Clean, runs good.
– John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 7. The unscrupulous second-hand car dealer speaks at a frantic pace in his bid to rip off car buyers with as many jalopies as possible. He tells his salesman to soften up customers, so that he can can close the sale of his beat-up rust buckets. He is greedily exploiting desperate migrant farmers headed for a better life in California, so that he can extract maximum profit from them. The dealer claims that his cars are good, but the reader knows that they are defective and sub-standard. This is an example of dramatic irony. This passage also foreshadows the nature of the California dream. The dealer’s deception of migrants with worn-out cars that are made to seem roadworthy, suggests that the American Dream of a good life in California may turn out to be just that – simply a dream!