Kelsey+Asher

In confronting injustice, individuals must join together for a common cause with strength and support to overcome their obstacles or hardships they share. In Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, the Joad family, along with many other Okie farmers, are forced from their lands due to the “Dust Bowl” and the big business owners wanting to take over their land. While on their journey west to California, the promise land, they must unify and overcome their problems as a family. They confront many injustices along the way, but stay on their feet in unity as a family should do.

When confronted with injustice, an individual must always keep going and never give up, just like the Joad family who struggled their whole life. In chapter three of Grapes of Wrath, a turtle is purposely struck by a truck driving down the highway. Although the turtle survived, it created difficulty for turtle and how it would be able to turn back on its legs and survive. The shell of a turtle protects itself when it is hit by having all of the individual patches come together to form one form of protection. "Lying on its back, the turtle was tight in its shell for a long time. But at last its legs waved in the air, reaching for something to pull it over. Its front foot caught a piece of quartz and little by little the shell pulled over and flopped upright,"(15). In many ways the turtle is like the Joad family and the Oklahoma farmers. They all needed to join together for a common cause and work with the resources they had to survive throughout their journey to a new life. The turtle also represents the slow, old fashion pace of colonial American, and the truck shows the industrialization of the progressive era and its fast pace change in the 1930’s. The government didn’t show compassion for the farmers and their lives, just like the reckless driver didn’t care about the survival of the turtle. The turtle, and the Okies, had to rely on themselves, but more so, the power of unity.

The corruption of the 1930’s towards the Okies was injustice in itself. Not only was their land stripped from their hands, their belongings sold to be able to make the journey to California, and not knowing know if their destination would be as fulfilling as they thought, but men would sell junk cars to Okies because the Okies didn’t know the difference between the corrupt sale and honesty. The junk cars exploited the farmers’ ignorance and lack of knowledge to be able to know if it was a suitable deal or not. Just like their journey was a false promise, the salesmen gave false promises of their cars. "Make 'em put out, and then sock them into it." (pg. 62) This showed how much the car salesmen only cared about the profit, and not the quality of their cars. Salesmen can manipulate the consumer into thinking the quality of the car is great, and then lure them in to buying their horrible product. There was no pity for the Okies or their situation.

In the 1930’s, the Dust Bowl was a time of severe dust storms that caused damage to prairie lands like erosion and damage to the planters soil. Many droughts and plowing of the topsoil killed the nutrients that kept the soil healthy to maintain crops. The Dust Bowl forced thousands of families west to California in search of jobs and a new life. In chapter fourteen of Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck describes the fear that owners felt due to their mistreatment and the turmoil of business owners that caused them to move away their land. With strength in numbers, the Okies could have tried to fight their cause to save their land, but the tractor has replaced the farmer in the new society and all hope was lost. "Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments." (pg 150) Tractors were faster and more consumer efficient for businesses, while the old fashion ways of farming were a thing of the past compared to the city life in the east and west. Although the farmer ruled over the land since the beginning of American history, new ways of industrialization were taking over businesses and overthrowing small farmers off their lands. Though this occurrence was injustice, the farmers could have unified together to reorganize their society.

Just like the United States took over the California Territory from Mexico during the war, land was being taken from the Okies by the big businesses in the 1930’s. The squatters of Mexico lived off the land for many generations and were eventually pushed off their land after the war. The land we know today was a source of profit, just as the government saw the land in Oklahoma. History repeated itself, with the land of California, where the Okies were headed, and the Dust Bowl in the Great Plains. The main purpose of this was possession was ownership, and whatever you could possess could further your success. The government would use the resources of the land available to them to confront their own injustice, like depression and losing jobs and income, before the resources were gone. They continued to build through the Okies territory, not thinking of the grievances of the Okies or the hardship they were putting on them. The injustice to the Okies, besides stripping them of their land, was the loss of democracy and freedom of speech. The Okies couldn’t revolt against them or reenter the land they once called home. The changes were impossible to turn back for the Okies had no strength or power to change the minds of the business owners.

The anger driven out of the Okies because of their land being taken away resulted in fearing for their own lives. The Okies were unsure of the destination they were about to take for it was foreign land to them. They feared for their lives and prayed for the chance to make it to California to start a new life with their family together. Not only were the Okies angered and fearful, but the Californians didn’t welcome to Okies at all. With the Okies came more people looking for jobs and more competition in the work force. “These goddamned Okies are dirty and ignorant. They're degenerate, sexual maniacs. These goddamned Okies are thieves. They'll steal anything. They've got no sense of property rights"(283). Californians saw no regard for others, and saw the Okies as dirty foreigners who were in the wrong place. Instead, they should have joined together to overpower the big businesses and job markets and destroyed the infrastructure of big businesses owning small businesses. The Okies had no resources to survive, and the separation of feast and famine was increasing throughout the United States.

“On Dumpster Diving,” by Lars Eighner, is a how to guide of dumpster diving, and where you could find someone's trash as your treasure. When he spent all his money on the rent and had no money for everyday necessities, he turned to dumpsters to find his everyday needs. “I find from the experience of scavenging rather deep lessons. The first is to take what you can use and let the rest go by. I have come to think that there is no value in the abstract. A thing I cannot use or make useful, perhaps by trading, has no value however rare or fine it may be. I mean useful in a broad sense--some art I would find useful and some otherwise.” From dumpster diving Lars learned to be grateful for what he found, even if it was only in a dumpster and he had to go against normal society to receive it. The injustice in Lars’s story is the fact that society today is so corrupt that many Americans are losing jobs and their income and have to resort to dumpster diving. Not only must they dumpster dive, but there were enough people in the world who needed to dumpster dive that a man had to write a “how to guide” for dumpster diving. Instead, the individuals confronted with the corrupt society should join with others in confronting injustice and conquer over it.

In “Homeless: Expose the Myths,” Joseph Perkins exposed the myth by investigation and actual research of how homeless are being treated, how they accumulate and how to help the homeless so they can better their situation and the society we live in today. Joseph Perkins discovered that the homelessness was due to their “self-destruction,” instead of by the depressing economy combine. He also concluded that mental health and drug abuse problems caused homelessness. The injustice of the government releasing patients from mental institutions was accused of being the reason the homeless were put upon the streets of America. The homeless were confronted with the problem of being without health insurance or income, and the government was not there to guide them into the right direction but instead to look at them with disgust. When the homeless confront injustice, the lack of resources they have provides a hardship to overcome and thrive, and because of this the government is also to blame for lack of leadership to society.

Barbara Lazear Ascher's "On Compassion" deals with the acts of compassion and the motives behind them. In “On Compassions,” Ascher sees situations that obtain threats to society and individuals and in return they treat the threat with kindness. She also talks about the poor and homeless and how society doesn’t fully understand their concerns and hardships. Throughout her story, the purpose is to fully inform the reader of what true compassion is and explain how the homeless try to relate to compassion. She also states that while dealing with injustice, it is best to confront the injustice with acts of kindness. When the mayor of New York City moved the homeless off the streets and into Bellevue Hospital, many saw this as an act of compassion and kindness. Other may have thought this was a way to make the city look nicer without the homeless infesting the city. "Raw humanity offends our sensibilities. We want to protect ourselves from an awareness of rags..." Although the mayor moved the homeless citizens to the hospital where they could receive care and a place to sleep, the internal motive of the mayor could have been one of injustice and not of compassion. In Grapes of Wrath, Californians and big businesses didn’t care about the situations of the Okies and therefore showed a strong lack of compassion for them. The big businesses took over the Oklahoma territory, making the Okies move west to California. The lack of compassion the big businesses had was due to the fact they had no idea of the circumstances they were going through. Once they got to California they were also confronted with lack of compassion, as the locals saw them as dirty and in the wrong place. Compassion was not something the homeless, or the Okies, were accustom to. While confronted with injustice, individuals must join together and fight for the common cause to overcome the hardship and succeed. In Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, the Joad family is faced with many injustices at home in Oklahoma due to the Dust Bowl in the 1930’s and while on their new journey to California to start a new life. In today’s society, we see injustice through the eyes of the homeless. Whether it is self destruction or the corrupt society we live in, they are faced with injustice everyday. By joining together, with others or through compassion, injustice is overcome. \

Work Cited

Perkins, Joseph. "Homeless: Expose the Myths." March 2009 .

Ascher, Barbara L. "On compassion." Mar. 2009 .

K.Asher