Ryan+Boselo

__Confronting Injustice__ Throughout the world, Injustice has become a part of everyday life. It has overwhelmed the world like cancer spreading through the body, unable to stop it and extremely difficult to cure. Martin Luther King Jr. once said “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”. Whether it is for good or bad injustice seems to never go away. The role of individuals in confronting injustice is seen in //The Grapes of Wrath// by John Steinbeck, //Civil Disobedience// by Henry David Thoreau, “The Ways We Lie” by Stephanie Ericson, and “Homeless: Expose the Myths” by Joseph Perkins. The role of an individual in confronting injustice is to combine with many people and to begin to build infrastructure that will benefit themselves and others in the long run.

In the first chapter of //The Grapes of Wrath//, Steinbeck opens the novel with the first injustice the Oakie farmers will have to face. During the 1930’s a terrible drought struck Oklahoma called the “Oklahoma Dust Bowl”. Steinbeck description that, “Every day the earth pales...” (p.4) and that “The dawn came, but no day” (p.5) depicts the hopelessness of the situation that the Joad’s face. This natural injustice presents the farmers with a difficult decision. Stay and lose all source of income because their once plentiful farmland is now a baron dustbowl. Or they could pack up their things and move west in a hope for a new life and a livable future. The role of the individual in confronting injustice in this chapter is the ability of the Joad family to overcome the natural injustice that has struck them and move west to California. The reason the Oakie farmers failed in Oklahoma is because they had no infrastructure to fall back on when the dust storm hi, This lack of infrastructure is what over time made them have to change their lifestyles and move to California.

In the third chapter of //The Grapes of Wrath//, Steinbeck employs the turtle and the truck into the novel. When crossing the street the turtle is constantly victimized by the harsh realities of the ever changing environment it lives in. The turtle symbolizes the Joad family as they move across the country coming across many obstacles by overall overcoming them. The injustice employed in chapter three of //The Grapes of Wrath// is the new modern industrialization represented by the truck, which does not have the necessary infrastructure to sustain the change for the small farmers, represented by the turtle. The role of an individual in confronting injustice is seen even deeper within the turtle. The shell of the turtle is composed of different plates that flex and bend upon impact, distributing it throughout the shell, just as the Joad’s worked together as a family to overcome the injustices they were faced with. “His frond 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”(p.15) This shows how the turtle’s shell is able to defend off overpowering injustices because of its unique shell. If the shell was unable to distribute the injustice to all plates it would have died. If the Joad family were to separate they would have certainly been unable to survive the journey to California.

In the ninth chapter of //The Grapes of Wrath,// Steinbeck implements the recurring theme throughout the novel, that families must come together in order to overcome injustices and put their pasts behind them and learn to adopt to the ever changing future. In this chapter, the people are being forced to sell their belongings at no cost. The selling of the family’s belongings and the bank kicking them off of their land shows how the families must put their old lives behind them and change for the future. “You’re not buying only junk, you’re buying junked lives”(p.87) This shows how much the farmers and their families were connected with their possessions. Throughout the chapter there are no quotation marks used. This is a reflection of the loss of individuality the people experience. This overall experience of loss of individuality must occur in order to overcome the injustice they face on a daily basis as a family.

In “The Ways We Lie” by Stephanie Ericson, Ericson describes how difficult it is for an individual to live an ordinary day without lying. She uses past experiences to show how lying creates a corrupt and intolerable society. I believe the reason we lie as individuals in most situations is because it is the easiest thing to do, when in fact it just creates more and more problems. One of the most common lies in today’s world is the white lie. “ A man who won’t lie to a woman has very little consideration for her feelings.” Bergen Evans. The white lie assumes that the truth will cause more damage than a simple harmless lie when in fact it only dampens it. For example when telling a friend he looks great when really he looks bad can be based on a decision that the friend is in need of a compliment rather than a frank opinion. This in fact is complete arrogance as if every lie, which attempts to make you feel better than you actually are. Many liars are present in //The Grapes of Wrath//, for example when the poor family is at the truck stop and the father asks how much the candies are? The woman working there says they are 1 cent a piece when in fact they are 5 cents each. This lie has no bad effect on the store but shows in a small aspect how a little lie can have a large effect on society.

In //Civil Disobedience// by Henry David Thoreau, Thoreau informs people of the need for government to control the laws it sets forth and to use the power of the majority because they are the most powerful. Thoreau states that America’s policies and laws towards slavery and the Mexican American War were unjust and discouraged by many people. Thoreau also states the need for constant civil protest on unjust laws. He states that it is the common person’s role to do what is right and not to follow the laws set forth by the majority. He uses his past life experiences to reinforce his belief that there is a drastic need for people to control their own mind and not let the government bodies of the world control them. In protest of slavery, Thoreau refuses to pay his taxes and ends up spending a night in jail. By doing this he disassociates himself from the government by disagreeing with its unjust laws. This shows how Thoreau has experienced the government control over him and attempted to make a stand.

In the eleventh chapter of //The Grapes of Wrath//__,__ Steinbeck describes the way in which the farmers were forced to leave the land where they had lived their entire lives. The bank was the official owner of the land so now the farmer’s production had severely decreased, sometimes having no production. The banks had no choice but to kick them out. The injustice in this chapter is seen when the banks give the farmers no other choice but to leave their property and sell their belongings to pay their debt. This political injustice blindsides the farmers in such a way that they will never be able to come back from this. They literally have to begin a new life.

In //Homeless: Expose the Myths//, Perkins is a journalist for the San Diego Union Tribune. He puts himself in a situation where he is a homeless person. He wants to see whether or not the blame was to be put on economic policies for the rapidly growing amount of homeless people on the streets of America. Perkins’ purpose is to convey his message of exposing the myth of how homeless people are treated and the injustice they are constantly being faced with.

In the twenty-fifth chapter of the novel, //The Grapes of Wrath//, considered to be one of the most important, considering it is the reason for the actual title of the novel. Steinbeck re-implements his common theme throughout the novel of the power of unity. The reason Steinbeck chose //The Grapes of Wrath// as the title is to show how the grapes which symbolize the people are greatly affected by the dirt or society they grow in. If the grapes are hit by an injustice from a dust storm they will obviously go bad just as the Oakies in the east and lost production from the dust bowl and were forced to move west.

R. Boselo

__Work Cited:__  1. John Steinbeck. The Grapes of Wrath Text And Criticism. New York: Penguin Group, 1977. 2. Ericsson, Stephanie. "The Ways We Lie." 30 Mar. 2009 <[]>. 3. Perkins, Joseph. "Homeless: Expose the Myths." 30 Mar. 2009 <[]>. 4. Thoreau, Henry D. "Civil Disobedience." __The Thoreau Reader__. 29 Mar. 2009 <[]>. 5. Steinbeck, John. __Grapes of Wrath__. New York, N.Y: Penguin, 1992.