4.Injustice

Right from Wrong ====While growing up we are taught our parents' principals of what’s right from wrong. Steinbeck uses the farmers and the tractor driver as examples to portray what’s right and what’s wrong. The farmers knew that being evicted by the bank was wrong. It wasn’t their fault that the land wasn’t producing anything, it was because of the drought ."Grampa took up the land, and he had to kill the Indian's and drive them away. And Pa was born here, and he killed weeds and snakes"(33). The farmers had lived on their land for several years and now they were unfairly being kicked out by the banks. It was also unjust towards the farmers because they weren't given any notice before hand of the evection. "What we going to do Ma? Where we going to go? The women said We don't know, yet"(35).The way in which the land was taken away from the families in an instant was terrible. Not only did the adults suffer from this injustice so did the children. The individuals, which in this case were tractor drivers, were hurting the land without caring if other people were being affected by it. They had to do what was best in their mind for both themselves and their family. Without taking any importance of the other families who were also sufffering through those harsh times.Though this may be seen as a selfish act, everybody had to do what ever they could to survive the Great Depression. ====


Injustice

 Throughout "The Grapes of Wrath" Steinbeck describes different scenarios of an individual confronting injustice. Those individuals try to speak up for the rest of the group, but every time that occurs those individuals end up crushed by the government.Steinbeck tries to get across that in order to "defeat" injustice they must stay together and fight as a whole.For example, when Casey tried to stick up for the workers who got paid low wages,"You fellows don't know what you're doing', You're helping starve kids"(386). Casy felt that he needed to stick up for the rest though in the end he got killed for it. "The heavy club crashed into the side of his head with a dull crunch of bones, and Casy fell sideways out of the light"(386). When the men of higher authority felt that Casy was a threat to them they got rid of him immediately. On the other hand the Joad family sticking together as a group heading towards California made them stronger and helped them make it. This chapter ties in with the rest of the book because the farmers that once owned the land were being mistreated and kicked out be the higher authority. The tractor driver in chapter 11 is an individual that proceeds on doing his task even though the land which he plows has been taken unjustfully from the farmers. He was just one person and he really could not do mch by himself to stick up to the higher authority. Those tractor drivers had no room to think about the farmers because if they did so they hadno hope in surviving themselves.During this great depression people were forced to make a decision that determined wether they had enough money to eat that night, even if they felt it was just or unjust.