Denise+Mendoza

__ Inhumanity to Man __ Injustice is what people face on a day to day basis. What compels us to react to this injustice can come from anger, hurt, or just simple revenge. Some of these injustices are stronger than the rest. Society teaches us to stand up for ourselves and fight back. John Steinbeck in //The Grapes of Wrath// shows the different ways the farmers, or migrants, have to deal with the injustice. The role of the individual is to fight off the injustice and judge right from wrong. How the individual judges right from wrong is ultimately up to that person. Some of the ancillary texts that demonstrate injustice are //The Ways We Lie// by Stephanie Ericsson, //On Dumpster Diving// y Lars Eighner, and //On Compassion// by Barbara Lazear Asher. Throughout Steinbeck’s novel we see many incidents that show injustice. In one of the chapters that we saw injustice was in chapter 3 that deals with the turtle. In the novel, the farmers were kicked out of their land by the banks. Since they had no where to live anymore, the farmers had to pack up their belongings and migrate to a different place. The turtle and the farmers are alike in some ways; also the turtle serves as a symbol for the farmers. For example the turtle was mistreated when a driver swerved their car to hit it, even though the turtle had done nothing to disturb the driver. This is alike to what happened to the farmers. The farmers were mistreated by being kicked out without a probable cause.

One way the turtle faced this injustice was that after being hit, it got right back up “The old humorous eyes looked ahead, and the horny beak opened a little” (16). The same thing happened with the farmers, they didn’t give up; instead they packed their things and headed to California. A similarity between the turtle and the farmers is that when either one is it, the impact is distributed equally, lessening the pain. A turtles’ shell is made up of different plates. When the turtle is hit, the pain is distributed to all the different plates leaving the turtle unharmed. When the farmers are faced with an obstacle they distribute their pain to all the family members, helping each other solve the problem. Another problem the farmers dealt with was the salesman.

In chapter 7 we see injustice committed by salesman. The injustice is presented to the farmers because they were dealing with unfairness by the salesman, and they had the feeling on being cheated. The salesman would sell parts to the farmers in need, but they wouldn’t tell the farmers if the parts didn’t work. Also the salesman didn’t give the farmers any guarantees with the parts. When it came to selling those parts they didn’t care what it took “Sock it to’ em!”(61). If it took lies, then that’s what they told “You don’t want no La Salle. Bearings shot. Uses to much oil” (63). They sold the car they wanted to sell, the one that was more expensive, not the car the farmers wanted to buy. A way for the farmers to confront this injustice would be to be informed more about cars and not let the salesman push them into buying a car they didn’t want in the fist place.

The salesmen don’t feel any pity towards the farmers because they feel that what they did isn’t wrong. They need to sell cars in order to gain money which will help support their families. The salesman don’t let themselves feel any compassion towards the farmers, this allows them from judging what’s right from wrong. In the eyes of the salesman this wasn’t an injustice, just a form of survival. The salesmen believe the farmers aren’t able to survive in a world like this, so to them it’s just Social Darwinism. However in the eyes of the farmers this was wrong because they got the short end of the straw.

The overall theme in chapter 11 was that of nature and the effect it has on the land. Steinbeck uses horses and tractors to explain the connection and interception they have to the land. The horse comes from the same nature as the land. Since they are from the same nature, when the horse would plow the land it would allow the land to grow and flourish “…and when a horse stops work and goes into the barn there is life and a vitality left…” (115). On the other hand, a tractor is not alive so it’s not from the same nature “The heat goes out of it like the living heat that leaves a corpse” (115). When someone dies there is nothing left in their body, all the life leaves it. That same thing happens to the land once the tractor is done plowing it. This cuts any connection that the tractor might have to the land.

An injustice we see in this chapter is that when one person tries to stand up for their rights, they end up getting crushed by the superior power. An example of this would be when Casey tried to stand up to the higher power by himself. Instead of accomplishing anything, he got killed instead “The heavy club crashed into the side of his head with a dull crunch of bones, and Casey fell sideways out of the light” (386). What Steinbeck tries to get across is that they must unite and fight together. One person can’t do much, but together they can accomplish something.

Highway 66 was the main road the migrants used to get across to California. This highway brought many complications to the families. Along the road there were many broken down cars that people just left there, because they didn’t have any money to repair them. The one’s who could afford parts usually over-paid for them. This is showing the injustice the migrants had to go through. Many were so desperate that they paid for the part no matter how expensive, and the salesman took advantage of that “They look a fella over. They know he can’t wait and the price goes up” (120). The salesmen realize that the migrants are in desperate need and they know they will buy the part no matter what. One way to confront the injustice would for the farmer to show the salesmen that he isn’t ignorant and can’t be deceived easily. If there was more support by society, the consumer wouldn’t be ripped off so easily. The salesmen couldn’t think of the migrant, he had to think of himself and methods on how to survive “I can’t help what happens to you. I got to think of what happens to me” (20). So you could say this was wrong but you also have to take into consideration the life of the salesmen.

In chapter 9 the tenants are being forced to sell their belongings. Since they are going to move, they can’t take much with them. The injustice that the migrants are being faced with is that they lave a lack of resources to adapt with the change. The families are stuck on their past lives. They aren’t able to move on because they are focusing on their past lives and how their lives used to be “How can we live without our lives? How will we know it’s us without our past?”(88). They are reluctant to let go, because they are afraid of what the future might bring. The best way to get rid of the past is to sell all their belongings. This way they are overcoming the injustice.

The families know that selling all their belongings, even their most priced possessions is wrong “You’re buying years of work, toil in the sun; you’re buying sorrow that can’t talk” (87). They have lived with those things all their lives and it’s not right to sell them like that. Though they do know that selling them is the best way to move on. They basically have two choices, sell what they have and make a profit, or they can leave everything behind at the house where people can steal it “the rest? Leave it- or burn it up” (88). They had no choice but to only take what they needed in order to survive the long journey that awaited them.

Stephanie Ericsson in //The Ways We Lie,// shows the different ways we lie and what results can come from it. Though the purpose is that lies aren’t acceptable, they are atrocious and once we do it so much, it becomes invisible to us. We become so accustomed to lying we can’t distinguish the truth any longer “…until moral garbage becomes as invisible to us as water is to a fish”. Ericsson isn’t a hypocrite by saying she doesn’t lie, on the contrary she admits that she also lies and provides us with some examples.

How the individual judges right from wrong becomes difficult in this case. We know the lies we tell are wrong, but it feels right when we do it for our benefit. Though when we are lied to we know the lies are wrong. So why do we lie, for our benefit, to escape the reality? Maybe we lie because society forces us to. We need to be accepted in society, so we do or say anything so we can fit into society. Lies are always going to be told, and we might never find an answer as to why we do it. The answer might lie within ourselves; we just might have to dig in deep to find it.

Barbara Lazear Ascher purpose in //On Compassion// is to remind society what compassion is. To show that we aren’t born compassionate, that our actions speak louder for our words. Ascher shows several examples of when she saw acts of compassion taking place “She finds what she’s looking for and passes a folded dollar over her child’s head to the man…” The woman might have given the homeless man a dollar out of compassion, or out of fear. If she handed it over it was out of fear so he would leave her daughter and herself alone. A way to confront injustice would be by compassion. Even if you were a passerby you could easily stop and help someone in need. A way the major confronts injustice towards the homeless during the winter is that he shelters them in the Bellevue Hospital “As winter approaches. The mayor of New York City is moving the homeless off the streets and into Bellevue Hospital”. This shows that one way to confront the injustice would be by taking action.

As human being we distinguish what’s right and wrong from what we see. The woman giving the man the dollar was the right thing to do. The people on the corner who looked away “ The others on the corner, five men and woman waiting for the cross town bus, look away,…”,seem selfish because they would rather look away than feel any compassion. You feel better about yourself when you commit an act of kindness because you know it was the right thing to do. This is a topic where you could easily find many acts of right and wrong.

Throughout this novel and the ancillary texts we saw many examples of injustice, such as social, and economical, and the ways we should confront the injustice. One of the most common ways would be to come together as a whole. Steinbeck makes it clear that as a whole the problem is easier to face. Throughout our lives we will be faced with problems and we are going to have to dig our way out of them. You need people to rely on such as many of these migrant families relied on each other. The most important thing is to fight and stand up to the injustice.

Works Cited 

chapter 3-
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__Ohio.com MM Server__. 8 Mar. 2009 <[]>. __Pinellas County Schools & Teachers__. 8 Mar. 2009 <[]>. Steinbeck, John. __Grapes of Wrath__. New York, N.Y: Penguin, 1992.  __WGMD 92.7 The Talk of Delmarva | State, County, People, Police, Would__. 7 Mar. 2009 <[]>. Chapter 7- Chapter-By-Chapter Summary". Shmoop University Inc . March 8, 2009 <[]>.

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**Chapter 11-**
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**Chapter 12-**
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**Chapter 9-**
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**The Ways We Lie-**
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**On compassion-**
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