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Grapes Of Wrath Essay An individual judges right and wrong through a set of values instilled in them by society, religion and experiences. An individual confronts injustice in two primary ways: a passive method of not associating themselves, or helping the injustice to an active method of unifying and gathering support to fight against it.

In The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, the Joads continually find themselves and other migrants facing injustice born out of people’s lack of moral values--because they do not understand the Joads, and people fear and consider wrong that which they do not understand or experience. The wave of mechanization, new perspectives and views that rode on the back of the dust bowl was one of profits. When a farmer, who has the moral values that have been passed down for generations on the land, asks the tractor driver “Well, what you doing this kind of work for—against your own people?” (pg. 50 Steinbeck), he gets the new answer, the answer born out of a desire for money; “I got a wife and kids, 3 dollars a day. We got to eat.” (pg. 50 Steinbeck) This symbolizes how small farms focused on survival and family cannot survive a collision with the morals and ethics of a big business focused on money. “When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can’t stay one size,” (pg. 44 Steinbeck) explains one businessman to a distraught farmer. However, even after the farmers had been ousted they knew that if they stayed together and their family didn’t fracture they could survive. “Women and children knew deep in themselves that no misfortune was too great if their men were whole”(pg 7 Steinbeck). This solid family structure is represented by the turtles shell in chapter three. “His front wheel struck the edge of the shell, flipped the turtle like a tiddly-wink, spun it like a coin, and rolled it off the highway…Its front foot caught a piece of quartz and little by little the shell pulled over and flopped upright.” (pg 22 Steinbeck). This symbolizes how a united family like the turtle with its shell, is able to absorb damage and continue on its way, shaken, but relatively unhurt.

As the migrants prepared to move westward, they continued to encounter the new morality, personified by the car salesman who has no qualms about selling broken cars for an extortionate amount of money. “We guarantee it to be an automobile not to wet nurse it,” (pg. 65 Steinbeck). His greed is clearly seen by his repetitive statement “If only I had one hundred jalopies, I don’t care if they run or not”(pg. 83 Steinbeck). Once again, however, the migrants lack of unity means that they are unable fight the salesman’s mistreatment and malpractice.

Once the migrants reach California, they find people angry and fearful of them. This is because the Californians, like all of us, fear that which we don’t understand or experience, and it is through that understanding and experience that we judge right and wrong. “Men who had never been hungry saw the eyes of the hungry. . . and they convinced themselves that they were good and the invaders bad.”(pg. 386 Steinbeck) On Compassion by Barbara Lazear Ascher states that “I don’t believe one is born compassionate, compassion is not a character trait like a sunny disposition. It must be learned, and it is learned by having adversity at our windows, coming through the gates of our yards, the walls of our towns, adversity that becomes so familiar that we begin to identify and empathize with it.” (Ascher On Compassion) The Californians did not feel sympathy for the migrants because they didn’t understand or experience what the Okies had to do. Anna Quindlen in her essay “Homeless” explains further why the Californians call them “Okies” and treat them so badly, in an example that parallels the Joads’ story. “It has been customary to take a people’s pain and lessen our own participation in it by turning it into an issue, we turn our adjective into a noun, the poor, not the poor people, the homeless, not Ann or the man who lives in a box. . .” (Quindlen Homeless) The farmers do not understand or want to understand or help the migrants. So they label them “Okies” and “degenerate and filthy.” (pg. 386 Steinbeck)

The Joads continue on their voyage with their high family morals, always at odds with the morals of money. There is talk of unification between the farmers, but it is always crushed, because such unification would pose a threat to the profits at the banks, as the banks destroy the fruit to raise the price. “The works of the roots, of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price.”(pg. 476 Steinbeck) In the end, it is not the hatred that’s the injustice, it’s the system that starves its people to gain money, that‘s the injustice. “Men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby their fruits may be eaten.” (pg. 426 Steinbeck) The farmers fail in even their duty as described by Thoreau in Part One of “Civil Disobedience” to “not practically give it his support.” (Thoreau, Civil Disobedience) This injustice bred out of misunderstanding, differing morals and ignorance “is a failure. . . that topples all our success,” (pg. 427 Steinbeck).

Works Cited: Steinbeck, John. __The Grapes of Wrath__. Janson: Penguin books, 1992. Quindlen, Anna. "Homeless." 30 Mar 2009 Thoreau, Henry “Civil Disobedience.” __The Thoreau Reader.__ 30 Mar. 2009 < http://thoreau.eserver.org/civil.html Ascher, Barbara L. "On compassion." 30 Mar. 2009 <[]