P4+NMarin


 * __Prelude to Unification__**

When describing an individuals moral state of being, their surroundings play an extensive factor as that individual develops throughout life. Steinbeck, in Grapes of Wrath, helps illustrate how societies influential impact gives the individual their unique manner in apprehending injustices. Society then shows how society handles situations in which ask the individual to think outside their comfort zone and help their constant rebirth of knowledge to expand.

To acknowledge and accept the fact that an individual can no longer help provide for his/her family must be quite the difficult thing to do. As the withering of the farm land surrounding them, the Joads can no longer neglect the fact that the place they were once able to call a home is nothing more than a big bowl of dust that is no longer good enough to live on. “If the dust only wouldn’t fly. If the top would only stay on the soil, it wouldn’t be so bad” (Ch. 5). So this new realization pushes the Joads to take the big risk and head over to California. At first some of the family members show reluctance but in the end they go. Sometimes people have to come to realize when to let go and when it’s ok to not give up the fight. In this scenario, the Joads had no control over the weather environment and because of its imposing threats to their family they had to go in search for a fresh start somewhere unfamiliar.

Compassion is never a characteristic in which individuals are born with, rather it is a learned characteristic in which can be altered at any given time it is needed to. The tenants who owned the farmlands, in order to secure their wealth had come to evacuate the farmers. This is clearly unjust because the farmers have no where else to go to live yet these men show no compassion towards them and must do what they have to do. Instead of fighting back for their homes, the Joads remain quite and accept their fate. “This land, this red land, is us; and the flood years and the dust years and the drought years are us. We can’t start again” (Ch. 9). It’s ironic how they complain about their new misfortune yet they do nothing about and go off to endure their awaiting new future. It seems as if they acquire knew knowledge with every positive or negative experience yet they become afraid of the truths they come to stop by.

In order for change to happen, there are many factors that are needed to achieve the dream. Its most necessary for society to unify and become one as whole in order to survive. As the migrant families made their way to California, they all grow closer to one another in the sense that they are all suffering trough the same hardship. In addition, this notion gave them a sense of appreciation of each other. “Early comers moved over, and States were exchanged, and friends and sometimes relatives discovered… An a new unit was formed.” (Ch. 17) The power in numbers has set into the minds of the emigrants. With the hope of survival, they acknowledge the fact that they will need to come organize if they will reach their goal of making it to California.

Knowing they have struck homelessness, they resort to whatever means necessary for mere survival. But even then it seems almost impossible for the Joads to earn enough money for food. The more they work as a group to try and relieve their suffering of homelessness, the more it becomes clear they will soon begin to perish away. “In the souls of the people, the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.” (Ch. 25) The laborious work put into to try and have at least one meal a day becomes an unachievable task. Scavenging is what they fall back on. “Boom boxes, candles, bedding, toilet paper, a virgin male doll, medicine…. I acquire many things from a dumpster.” Lars Eighner has promoted the action of scavenging in one of his articles‘. He notes how an individual with nothing at all will be able to enrich his/her life if you just look at what your surroundings offer. The Joads knew that being becoming homeless was inevitable.

Realization of the harsh reality has set into the minds of the scourging emigrants. They recognize the state of being with a comfort zone has ceased to exist to the Joads and are not welcomed in the state thought to have plenty of life and work for them. Homelessness was something the Joads had no control of. In //Homeless: Expose the Myths//, Perkins explains how an individual reaches a state of being without a home. “Clearly their homelessness owed not to economic dislocation, but simply to self-destruction.” Having no money was not the cause of their homelessness but rather that of natural disaster. There were no means of stopping such a disastrous incident.

With such an overwhelming impact on the emigrants from the economic downswing these emigrants took, not once did they take into consideration that uniting as a whole group, would have brought them out of the struggle. The thought of, how to live another day, was their main concern. The wealthier Californians prevented such an organization by the emigrants. If they ever get together there ain't nothin' that'll stop 'em.” (Ch. 19) With their minds burned out from thinking of how to survive, the people settled in California averted the emigrants overrunning their state. With such actions taken by the Californians, to the emigrants it was their last obstacle they would not overcome.

They entire migrating population remained ignorant until most of their kind began to perished. Though in their minds they knew unification was key to survival, they did not organize or promote such an act. They paid the price with their lives in danger and their population decimated. They overcame a cruel disaster only to be resented by a cruel society.

NMarin Period 4