P3+RGolden



People are blessed with the ability to decide for themselves; their own individuality. In John Steinbeck’s //The Grapes of Wrath//, individual characters are forced to choose between what’s wrong or right and what’s to survive or die. An individual judge’s right from wrong, not by what people hope they choose, but by what’s wrong or right for them. They have the right to confront injustice for what they see as wrong or right. They can be highly or mildly involved in confronting injustice, but the beauty of individualism is you can decide what’s going to work for you.

Every day an individual is confronted with a decision that resorts to what would be the right thing or the wrong thing to do. Steinbeck portrays this through a family, the Joad’s, who are forced to make a decision that will change their whole life. They have to choose between staying on their farm and eventually being run out by supreme corporations or flee to California in hopes of finding jobs and setting up a new life. They ultimately decide to leave towards the West. They packed up all they could fit on the family truck and headed West to where their decision between what’s right or wrong may lead them to a path they weren’t ready for.

In chapter 12, Steinbeck references to Highway 66 as, “the mother road, the road to flight”, in other words to only road to anywhere. Highway 66 represents the path of your choice, the path to where ever you want to go in life; the path of wrong or right. The individual has a choice to go either right or left, which could mean wrong or right. Neither direction is a bad way to go, because that direction could be the right way for another individual. The decision must be between what direction fits them best, because every individual has a right to choose what they want to do with their life, like Stephanie Ericsson’s essay //The Ways We Lie//. In her essay she first tells about a day where she said four white lies and the next day told the truth of those four lies, where they simply blew up in her face. By realizing all the lies we do daily, she then in detail explains ten different ways people lie. Ericsson does not want to lie to hurt people, as a definition commonly says happens when you lie, it is just something people do daily as a way to keeping feelings from getting hurt by the truth. Remember, the truth hurts sometimes. Ericsson states that, “there must be some merit to lying”, because white lying never gives you a guilty feeling. You can go the whole day committing white lies and never feel bad, because telling the truth all the time is almost impossible. Ericsson is just one example of how people make choices that fit their expectations of right and wrong.

Lars Eighner is another example of an individual who made a decision that was right for him. In his essay, //On Dumpster Diving//, he explains how to dumpster dive and how he learned to dumpster dive back before he was homeless. By dumpster diving, Eighner learned the value of others possessions and that others will value his unwanted. He never thought of the things he ever lost, because he knows, “there is plenty more where what we have came from”, by comparing his attitude of possessions to the wealthy. By Eighners choice to dumpster dive, he choose what was right for him and made became profitable while being mostly broke. He made a bad situation become more of an art form in his eyes. Everyone has different views on things, that’s why are choices for ourselves vary. Individuals not only choose what’s right for them, but they also have to right to choose what they believe and stand up for.

When the Joad’s were forced off the land, the Joad’s had a huge role in confronting the government about the situation. In chapter 11 Steinbeck references the deserted farm as death whose, “heat goes out of it like the living heat that leaves a corpse”. Though the Joad’s didn’t confront the injustice they had the choice to do so. The government slightly failed them, being they couldn’t confront the injustice because of the consequences the government would do to the migrant farmers. This situation corresponds to chapter 17 when Steinbeck explains how the migrant farmers created communities at night, because they will be destroyed at light. At night a strange things happens, “twenty families become one family…the golden time in the West was one dream”. The families created communities in secrecy at night to keep their hopes up that one day those injustices will be fought for and the government will be repented; that justice will once be served. The government should not be promoting the injustices, but stopping them from occurring.

In Joesph Perkins, //Homeless: Expose the Myths//, the truth about homeless people are revealed. It is obviously clear something happened in these peoples lives that left them to be homeless, but as Perkins discovers most of them suffer from, “some dysfunction or…afflicted with mental problems”, not from self-destruction or the loss of the will to live. The government should be helping out these homeless people who are not living in poverty, as most would tell you about the homeless, but from mere conditions they could not prevent. As the government it is their duty to serve justice, not injustice, to the American people. Mentally ill or dysfunctional, they are still the people of America and the government should pay more attention to the homeless. As a person of U.S., Perkins has a role in confronting the injustice of what he believes in; the condition of the homeless in America. Perkins reveals the challenges the homeless endeavor daily, injustice the government lacks to prevent.

Every individual has a plight of challenge as portrayed through the turtle in chapter 3. As the turtle is trying to walk from one side of the road to the other, the road represents challenge and struggle of the individuals. The turtle struggled along as one car swerved to not hit him and another purposely tried to hit him. “The back legs went to work straining like elephant legs,” he slowly struggled to get across that road as it was all swept from underneath him. The car that swerved represents the farmers and the supporters and the car that hit the turtle represents the big businesses and the banks. As the government, they should be stopping the classes from rising above one another; this chapter is a way that Steinbeck eludes his positions through a situation. An individual can fight for injustice, but individuals together are stronger as a whole; tough like a turtles shell. In chapter 5 Steinbeck refers to individuals as a whole and together they can fight back and win. Throughout the novel, the California farmers were always worried about the migrant farmers collectively growing, because they knew that once they joined in as one, there would be no stopping them.

The human being has the gift of individuality and a thinking mind. Individuals learn to think for themselves and choose for themselves and that’s what makes people so afraid of when people join together as one force. As humans, we are more powerful when we work together. The individual chooses right from wrong by how they know what would be a smart decision for them to make. The individual plays whatever role in confronting injustice they want to play; large or small. The individual is gifted with being able to make these decisions that can alter life in any direction they want it to go.

Rgolden Period 3