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Grapes of Wrath: Confronting Injustice

There are many assertions people make when deciding the individuals role in confronting injustice. The Grapes of Wrath, written by John Steinbeck, attempts to answer this question. The novel was written in the late 1930’s and centers on the Joad family and their quest to head to California during the Great Depression. Other texts, such as “Civil Disobedience”, “The Ways We Lie”, and “On Compassion” help analyze this particular question. One must know how to judge right from wrong, and with this knowledge one can make a valid claim. Therefore, an individual role in confronting an injustice is to work together and build a common infrastructure to disintegrate injustice.

To know the role of an individual in confronting injustice it is crucial that one knows and can distinguish the difference between what is right and what is wrong. “Civil Disobedience” by Henry Thoreau touches basis with how to distinguish right from wrong from government laws. “Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience?” Thoreau gives the people the choice of deciding right from wrong, and basically wants society to act against any unjust laws. “Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them”. It is up to society to base right from wrong on an infrastructure that would allow them to change unjust laws. An individual who can distinguish the difference between right and wrong and chooses what’s wrong cannot successfully know the role of an individual in confronting injustice. For example, in chapter seven of The Grapes of Wrath, a car salesman is selling a truck to a consumer. One can see that the car salesman takes the assumption that he is of higher authority than the consumer. “There’s a dumb-bunny looking at that Chrysler. Find out if he got any jack in his jeans”.(G.O.W) This quote shows that the car salesman knows that the consumer is ignorant of mechanics and car quality, and will attempt to cheat him in a deal. “Lined up side by side. Good used cars. Bargains. Clean, runs good”. (G.O.W) Steinbeck shows that these men knew what they were doing was wrong, but these men where just following the corrupt system. For this reason they cannot confront injustice, because there is no infrastructure in what they are doing, meaning that they cannot built up a future in what they are doing. The farmers are moving to California because the dust bowl took their land away. Now the salesmen will follow in their steps because the Depression is taking away their consumers. What justifies right from wrong? From society one was taught that good morals and deeds are right and doing something bad, such as hurting others, is wrong. In chapter 21, the farmers were mad at the okies because they came in as strangers, searching for jobs and taking their resources. So they started “guarding the world against their own people.” (G.O.W) Bigger companies started to take the regular farmer out of business. What happened was that men started to “reassure themselves that they were good and the invaders bad.” (G.O.W) The only thing that was happening was that these people, these companies, were just trying to create the best situation for them. The thing that justifies right from wrong is based on infrastructure, but the people did not see this and fought each other. The locals and farmers thought they were doing the right thing, but the problem was that there was nothing set up for the future. Coming together and setting up the proper infrastructure to fight off these low wages would have been the right thing to do. The bigger companies also did what benefited them, but instead they created a cycle that hurt the people and eventually few would be able to buy their products and the cycle come back to hurt them. “The Ways We Lie” by Stephanie Ericson helps analyze the harmful effects of lying in The Grapes of Wrath. Ericson views any sort of lie to be harmful to society and tells of how our acceptance of lies will cause deleterious consequences in the future. “Our acceptance of lies becomes a cultural cancer that eventually shrouds and reorders reality until moral garbage becomes to us as water is to fish.” Steinbeck portrays that lying is more destructible than one thinks, and he inability to see that simple lies are wrong and will cause fatal results for one’s infrastructure. For example, when the big companies were sending flyers, asking for more workers than there were flyers, those lies ultimately affected all those people. Another example can be seen in Rose of Sharon’s husband Connie, leaves her on her own. He lies to her and tells he’s going to get a job and buy his own store. Then he leaves and Rose of Sharon is heartbroken by that lie. Grampa committed a simple lie, by making the family believe he was going to go to California and then not going at the last minute. There was nothing for the Joad family to build upon, for Grampa was the head of the family. His death at the Joads first stop foreshadows a slow and painful journey. Now knowing how to judge right from wrong, one can attempt to answer the question of the role of an individual in confronting injustice. In Chapter three of The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck sets the blueprint for the book, and reveals that it is for the people to come together and unite to get rid any injustice. This is shown when Steinbeck uses a turtle to symbolize the people in society. He displays the peoples struggle by making the turtle struggle to get up the curb. The turtle needs to use all parts of his bod to get up the curb, which symbolizes the people working together to get where they want to in society. When the turtle manages to get up the curb, a truck comes down the road and purposely hits the turtle. Steinbeck sets an injustice that is bigger than the person alone. The truck symbolizes the bigger corporations that are hurting society, mainly because they form monopolies to wipe out all competition. The reason that Steinbeck uses a turtle, and not some other animal, is because when a turtle receives a blow, the shell plates distributes the pain evenly through its body, making it take huge amounts of contact. This symbolizes that the people need to come together as a group to fight an injustice, and when the blow comes, the pain will be distributed evenly, not only to one person. “On Compassion” by Barbara Lazear Ascher helps create a better understanding of the types of injustices set in The Grapes of Wrath. Compassion is one of the key to confronting and injustice, and better helps the individual that knows right from wrong. One example can be seen when the Joad family were in the “hoovervilles”, and many families were starving. Ma Joad cooked the food she had left for her family, and her compassion made her give the remainders to the starving children. This reveals that she knew that right thing to do, for she tired to help the community as best she could against the injustice of the Depression and the corrupt system at that time. The majority of the official lacked compassion to the okies, and therefore one can say that the individual became a part of that injustice. In chapter five, Steinbeck reveals that the injustice is the banks, which are corrupt and have furthered the economic depression. This bank is seen as a “monster with thought and feeling which had enslaved them”. This corrupt system took away the farmers land, and this chapter starts to foreshadow the need for the people to unite to start building a common infrastructure. This infrastructure is the base in which the injustice is destroyed. It is the building of the common goals of the people to make a better future for themselves and their generation to come. Steinbeck shows us two ways that this injustice is confronted, but purposely makes it ineffective to further his purpose of unity. “Some of the owner men were a little proud were a little proud to be slaves of such cold and powerful masters”. These men decided to join the system because of either fear or worship, and failed because there was no future secured. One must know how to judge right from wrong, and with this knowledge one can make a valid claim. Therefore, an individual role in confronting an injustice is to work together and build a common infrastructure to disintegrate injustice. Through the support of the text, one can see that Steinbeck’s purpose of unity got across as the best way for an individual to confront an injustice larger than themselves.

Work Cited 1. John Steinbeck. The Grapes of Wrath Text And Criticism. New York: Penguin Group, 1977.

2. Barbara Lazear Ascher.On Compassion.English Writing 300. http://wserver.scc.losrios.edu/~lewisa/English%20300/Essays/On%20Compassion.htm

3. Henry David Thoreau. Civil Disobedience. http://thoreau.eserver.org/civil.html

4. Stephanie Ericsson. The Ways We Lie. http://classroom.quixoticpedagogue.org/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_view&gid=667&Itemid=28

J. Antonio