Erica+Bizzell

__Social Injustices and the Role of the Individual in Society__ Social injustices are an issue that almost every individual must confront at one point in their life. In John Steinbeck’s //The Grapes of Wrath// and also using information from other outside readings the role of the individual when confronting injustice is to group together with others in order to fulfill their responsibility of overcoming the injustice by determining what is right from the wrongs committed against them by the government or other social injustices.

In the beginning chapters of //The Grapes of Wrath//, families like the Joads are introduced along with their problems with their crops and how it’s affecting them. Here is where Steinbeck begins to introduce the injustice that is placed upon the Okies leading them to leave there home town in order to provide for their families. They’re forced to leave their family farms that have been passed down generation to generation, in order to find new means to make a living. This provides the base for Steinbeck’s book and also begins to lay down the injustices that start it all. Humans cannot control the weather so why the weather is considered an injustice? It isn’t, it simply plays a role in the bigger picture of the oppressive government that continues to treat the people unfairly. That is where the individual comes in, their role is to join together, either as a family or with others so they can rise up against the government and make what is wrong, right. It is the responsibility of not only the Joads but also all of the Okies to rise up against the political machines that are kicking them off their farms for economic gain and profit.

Supporting this is Henry David Thoreau and his essay //Civil Disobedience// where he also describes that the individual must obey the government, which is part of the role that they play in society. However if they feel that the government is playing too big a part in their lives and unjust decisions are being made, they must rise up together to fix the problem. The government’s role, according to Thoreau, is too provide support for people, once they stop doing that then the individual must fight it off and think what is best for them as a people. It is also described that the best type of government is one that doesn’t govern too much. This supports Steinbeck in his claims made in The Grapes of Wrath that the individual has an obligation to the government and they need to follow the rules set down. Nevertheless if these laws are being made unjustly and causing problems for the people then it is their duty to fix that problem.

In Chapter three of //The Grapes of Wrath// Steinbeck makes a comparison between the Joad family and all of the Oakies and how they are like a turtle shell. They are not very strong pieces by themselves but when put together they are indestructible. This also resembles the family infrastructure that Steinbeck stresses throughout the novel. They need the family to move on and to be successful and without it the wrongs committed against them by the government would destroy them if they were each on their own and didn’t have anyone to lean on. Especially for the Joads the family infrastructure is what let them survive as far as they got. They group together and think of family first creating this support system that they use to confront injustice time and time after it is thrown at them. When Tom gets in a fight and needs to lay low, they hide him and risk everything to keep him safe. Its actions like these that Steinbeck uses to keep the family alive throughout the story.

By chapter nine of //The Grapes of Wrath// the farmers are forced to leave their farms by the banks and get off the land because they had never really owned it in the beginning. These people are then left with nothing and forced out on the road to go find work. The banks are losing money and in order to save what little they have left they hurt the farmers. The bank affects the people in a negative way despite its real purpose as to why it was created, to help the people. When the government is forced to hurt the people in order to survive then it has lost its purpose and must be destroyed and a new way of banking should be created. According to Steinbeck it is the individual’s responsibility to rise against these oppressive governments and hold them accountable for their actions, but only if those actions are causing the people to change their way of life and affecting them in a negative way. Here it didn’t have a positive ending and it trickled down causing misfortunes for everyone except the rich.

In Stephanie Ericsson’s essay //The Ways We Lie// she describes how lying has become a “culture cancer” that has spread throughout our society creating deception. Ericsson describes how lies always end up affecting people in a negative way and they are the cause for most problems even if they were told with the best intentions in mind. Even when you’re lying to save someone from getting hurt they will end up finding out eventually which will only make the truth hurt that much harsher and also it becomes harder for the individual to accept. By the 1930’s the government is full of lies that end up hurting the common people. It had failed in its purpose of being a support system and so it was the individual’s role to reform the original way of government and creating something that actually did its job. But they had been fed by the lies for so long that they didn’t know who to trust and where to turn too. This is the culture cancer that Ericsson is describing. It eats away at a society until it’s completely consumed by the lies and we don’t even recognize truth anymore. The civilian no longer has the ability to determine what is right from what is wrong due to the deception that is built up all around them. Had the individual’s done their job earlier on and seen this dishonesty taking place and confronted it then they probably could have made it much easier on themselves.

In chapter twenty one the Okies are kicked off their land and while the machines, which are the banks, begin to destroy their homes and land the Okies are forced to find work in California for low paying jobs along with the other millions of people who had lost everything in the drought. This just continues to prove Steinbeck’s theme of how the individual should confront an injustice. Had they joined together than they could have overthrown their oppressors, but they were more focused on themselves and getting their family somewhere safe and money to feed them. This isn’t a bad goal, family and its infrastructure is very important. It is another theme Steinbeck then introduces to the novel; the individual has a responsibility to their own family in providing for them and keeping them safe all tying back to the family infrastructure that he had stressed in the beginning.

In Barbara Lazear Ascher’s essay //On Compassion// she describes acts of compassion and questions the motives behind which they were committed. Were they done just because they could be or where they done with a selfish desire behind it? She states that when the individual confronts injustice it should be done through compassion. The okies take pity on stragglers and often create their own towns where they make attachments to their family. They group with others in order to survive the harsh obstacles they have ahead of them, they know that together they are stronger. So reaching out to each other is done mostly out of compassion so they can rise against the injustices committed against them. It is not done with a selfish desire behind it, it is done out of pure compassion for one another, much similar to the family infrastructure that Steinbeck uses.

Towards the end of the novel, more specifically in chapter twenty five, the Joads had finally reached California and everything is green and beautiful, however the perspective is changed throughout that novel because no one can buy the food being grown so everything rots and dies, very similar to the Joads perspective of California. Unity is what they need to confront the injustice in the book. Without unity they wouldn’t have gotten this far they definitely wouldn’t have survived, so unity is what is needed to fight off what is happening to them.

The individual’s role in confronting and injustice is to form unity in order to fight the injustice and decide what is right from what is wrong. In Steinbeck’s novel and other outside readings unity is a stressed trait in order for them to survive. Like the turtle shell example used throughout the novel the Okies must learn that together they are strong but broken they will not survive the social injustices placed against them, the only way to confront them is by uniting as one and rising up against it.