It’s not us, it’s the bank. A bank isn’t like a man. Or an owner with fifty thousand acres, he isn’t like a man either. That’s the monster.
– John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 5. The metaphor of the monster is used so that the men who come to evict the tenant farmers can excuse themselves of fault. They are not to blame, but some imaginary and unhuman creature that they work for. That’s the way they conveniently see it.