P3+TPatton

April 18, 2008

Individuals react differently when faced with injustices and when determining right from wrong. In Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, the farmers are forced to change their ways of living and abandon their normal life to adapt to the unequal management inflicted on them. When dealing with a moral standard of what’s right and wrong, many people make decisions based on their personal connection to the problem at hand. Responding the “right” way to injustices is hard for many people, specifically with the farmers, they find it difficult to focus on surviving and looking past being treated unfairly. Personal discernment, shaped by the culture, of what the right and wrong action is affects how people respond to the injustices they experience.

There is no set code of what is right and wrong, but based on society and personal relationships, a moral standard is created for individual’s to judge what they feel is considered the adequate way to handle themselves. “Our people are good people; our people are kind people. Pray God some day kind people won’t all be poor. Pray God some day a kid can eat” (239). This quote shows the farmers’ point of view on how they were being treated. The unjust management the businesses have over the farmers supports the suggestion that the farmers were upset because they were the ones being personally affected. In response to this injustice, the farmers instantly wanted revenge, “We could have saved you, but you cut us down, and soon you will be cut down and there’ll be none of us to save you” (87). Revenge is a natural reaction when someone is hurting you; the business owners were taking away the farmers’ livelihood, so the farmers naturally felt payback was imminent. Vengeance may not be the right way to respond to inequality, but because of the farmers’ personal connection to the issue, they believed it was necessary. The homeless are an example of this because they are often not given the respect that a more prominent member of society would receive, “It has been customary to take people's pain and lessen our own participation in it by turning it into an issue, not a collection of human beings. We turn an adjective into a noun: the poor, not poor people; the homeless, not Ann or the man who lives in the box or the woman who sleeps on the subway grate.” Anna Quindlin discusses the unjust treatment of the homeless to show how individuals view them as the society does, obsolete and unnecessary. The opinions people have about the moral standard that they use to gage right from wrong is a direct result of their surroundings and personal convictions.

Because of the capitalist society the farmers live in, the elite business owners feel they could control and manipulate the land owners. “How can we live without our lives? How will we know it’s us without our past? No. Leave it. Burn it” (88). This quote demonstrates how the farmers were forced to do things against their will because they were unable to fight back. They knew it was wrong for the businesses to take advantage of them, but they couldn’t do anything about it because of their lower status in society. “Lying on its back, the turtle was tight in its shell for a long time. But at last its legs waved in the air, reaching for something to pull it over. Its front foot caught a piece of quartz and little by little the shell pulled over and flopped upright” (15). In this example, the turtle’s daily struggles represent the lives of the farmers. It exemplifies the idea that the farmers will continually be beaten down for unjust reasons, but they have to persevere in order to survive. In a different scenario, the idea of dumpster diving is generally frowned upon within a society. Lars Eighner responds to these stereotypes in a sarcastic way when he writes, “I have heard people, evidently meaning to be polite, use the word foraging, but I prefer to reserve that word for gathering nuts and berries and such, which I do also according to the season and the opportunity.” The preconceived judgment that underprivileged people receive show that injustices are not always an action but also a label, and there are different ways to react, like Eighner’s comical approach. How people confront injustices changes based on the circumstance and personal feeling, but the general idea that something must be done to counteract it does not change.

People react to unfair treatment and judgment according to what is in their best interest as a whole. “For the quality of owning freezes you forever into ‘I’, and cuts you off forever from the ‘we’” (152). Steinbeck discusses the idea that when individuals are faced with challenges, such as having your land taken from you, they immediately begin thinking about what must be done for themselves, when in reality, receiving and giving help may be essential to overcoming the conflict. Reacting the “right” way to obstacles often is based on the person’s selfish view of what they think is best for them. When dealing with the homeless, Perkins realized that “some were afflicted with mental problems. Others were drug or alcohol abusers. Clearly their homelessness owed not to economic dislocation, but simply to self- destruction.” People usually view the homeless as a result of their own bad choices in life, when actually it was not their fault at all. Perkins later goes on to say the “right” way to help the homeless is to focus on improving their mental stability rather than their lack of residence. Approaching a conflict the correct way can make all the difference when resolving it.

People’s different perspectives on what is right and wrong affect how they handle difficult situations. Specifically when dealing with injustices, individuals tend to react a certain way that may not be the right way, but to them it seems fair because it directly helps their lives. Overall, a person’s accurate assessment of the right thing to do when dealing with unfair situations comes from their involvement in society and personal ideals.