Jeana+De+Arakal

Together we stand, united we fall. This sets the ideal infrastructure of a nation. Unity prevents injustice from festering in a community. But to confront an injustice and individual must define the injustice, or decide for one self what is right and what is wrong. In John Steinbeck’s enticing novel, “The Grapes of Wrath” the individual confronts injustice by not referring to oneself as an individual but to see the community of people as equals instead of just Okies, farmers, or bankers. Our community, our infrastructure, weakens each time we divide ourselves from one another. As long as we define ourselves as a community and as equals we can suppress our rampant individualism and unify for the common good of each other.

When an individual in confronted by an injustice the first instinct is to define what is the wrong within the injustice. By defining what we think is unjust we can figure what resources we have that are capable of impeding the injustice. Steinbeck opens his novel with a board prospective of injustice in chapter three when he depicts, “a light truck approached, and as it came near, the driver saw the turtle and swerved to hit it.” (p.15) The truck personifies the injustice that the Okies endure during the phase of the dust bowl, their broad and indomitable injustice is industrialization. In chapter three the truck purposely swerves to hit the turtle which is remarkably ok due to the protect it shell give it. The shell’s unique structure represents the power of unity in a community. A turtle’s shell will lessen the stress put on it by distributing the stress equally to the individual plates, much like the effects of an injustice to a community. In a community when an injustice is confronted the individuals take an equal part in distributing the impact. If one individual plate worked alone it would crack under the strain of the injustice. Similar to John Steinbeck’s views on the power of the unity is Thoreau’s and his essay, “Civil disobedience.” Thoreau’s three part essay plays up to the roles of the individual in society and how each person has a set role and responsibility that cannot be looked over. “If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders.” A responsibility listed in Thoreau’s essay is that an individual must act in a group, or community to help them in their pursuits. To work together is to see others as your equals and to not divide ourselves but what we are and what we are not is to prevent injustice from decaying our community and in turn us as individuals.

The progression of the novel leads the reader into a narrower prospective on the injustice that the Okies face. The injustice is narrowed to how we divide ourselves and create separation which in turns allows injustice to seep in. Chapter seven indulges the reader in the struggle and injustice of the car salesmen during the dust bowl age. “Sure we sold it. Guarantee? We guarantee it to be an automobile. We didn't agree to wet-nurse it." (p.65) This is the first physical sign of division between the people. The car salesmen uses the phrases, wet-nurse, which means to nurse like an infant or a baby. This remark is significant because they are creating that divide that separates their struggle from the struggle of the Okies. By demeaning the Okies to something that is less capable or lesser in general makes them less inclined to care about their misfortunes. To this day we demean our fellow man with labels such a homeless. In Quindlen’s essay “Homeless” she says that, “the homeless," they are also people; but people with no homes” We give our fellow men titles and labels to fit them into categories that separate them from us. Not only do we label them as something that we do not associate with like labels of being homeless, we also divide ourselves by calling fellow men names that degrade them into a less inclined position then us. In 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."(p.283) The California corporate farmers named the Okies as dirty and thieves so that they push them down on the social level. The corporate farmers didn’t see the Okies as equals, as mere farmers at the bottom of the barrel. They just saw competition, they just saw a way to succeed and took it and to justify their actions they made themselves believe that by calling the famers anything less than human then they weren’t doing an injustice to their fellow man.