P3+WBarloon

The issue as to how an individual should judge what is right from what is wrong along with the individual’s role in confronting injustice has long been debated. Everyone has their own ideas as to what is right or wrong and what they should do about it, bringing into focus the question of weather or not there really is a right answer to these questions. Author John Steinbeck uses his Great Depression novel, Grapes of Wrath; to address these questions within the story while countless other authors have taken a stance on this issue in their own works.

In a comparably short seventeen years of life, this author has come up with his own definition and idea as to how an individual is to judge right from wrong. Each and every individual will judge right from wrong differently, in the end, each just has to act accordingly to his or her own morals. In essence, whatever allows them to sleep at night is right, and what doesn’t is wrong. However, what allows for sleep and doesn’t allow for sleep changes for each individual depending upon their moral upbringing and the common sense that goes along with it. It depends on weather the individual chooses to dictate what is right or wrong by what society declares it to be, or by what they believe it to be through their parent’s teachings. Also, this author believes that each person is born with an innate sense of what is right and what is wrong without having to be told or taught anything, much like an animal is born with the basic instincts of survival and hunting. People like animals, still have to be taught the fine points of the lesson, but is born with the basis of the idea, the central focus of it. Aside from what is right and wrong, the role of the individual in confronting justice is another question highly debated.

One of Steinbeck’s opinion’s on the subject of an individual’s role in confronting injustice is that the individual itself has a smaller role than would be thought. It is the individual’s role to spark the passions and morals of a group to confront injustice. In this scenario, the real power of confrontation lies not with the individual, but with the group the individual is a part of. Steinbeck refers to this idea of an individual’s duty several times in his novel, one occurring in chapter 14 and another in chapter 17. In chapter 14 of Grapes of Wrath, the farmer’s experiencing the depression decide that it would be better for them to act as a group rather than as individuals. The make the decision to unionize, making the move away from the old system where, “the quality of owning freezes you forever into ‘I’, and cuts you off from the ‘we’” (Ch. 14). Another example of this type of group organization occurs in chapter 17 when the traveling farmers set up something like a community every night. Instead of traveling by themselves without any rules or regulations to follow, “every night a world created, complete with furniture, friends made and enemies established.” (Ch. 17). In both of these examples, each individual gives up something or sacrifices something in one way or another in order to improve the condition of the injustice inflicted upon the entire group. In the first example, the farmers give up their ownership and the ability to treat their work how they desire, and in the second example, they give up the freedom of not being bound by any rule or law for a taste of the order and stability they used to know in their lives.

Another way an individual confronts injustice in the novel is to sacrifice for the individual’s own behalf or in this case, the behalf of the individual’s family. In chapter 9 of the novel, the men of the farmer families are selling off nearly all of their unnecessary possessions for ridiculously small amounts of money. However, the farmers need the money terribly, no matter how small the amount is, “Fifty cents isn't enough to get for a good plow. That seeder cost 38 dollars. $2 isn't enough. Can't haul it back-- Well, take it, and a bitterness with it.” (Ch. 9). The farmers are taking the small amounts of money they get from these sales and trying to support their families for a little bit longer, or helping to pay their way to California, where they are all supposed to be able to find work.

One final way of confronting injustice in this novel is the basic idea of people helping people. The simple idea that if you see someone who is in need of help and you are capable of giving them the help they need, you do it. In chapter 12 on Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck writes about a family of twelve on their way to California, poor and desperate like the rest of them, but without a sufficient means of travel to get there. In short, the family was trying to walk to California; they relied heavily upon the assistance and friendly help of those fortunate enough to have a car to get them where they were going. Without the aid of the families with cars, it is doubtful that the family of twelve would have made it to California, let alone survived the trip. This idea is also supported in Henry Thoreau’s writing on Civil Disobedience. In the essay, Thoreau argues that a government should be smaller and less involved than the modern government’s we have today. If this were to be the case, the idea of people helping people would be more prominent because those people would not be banking on the government to bail them out or aid them as much.

The questions of an individual’s judgment of right from wrong and how an individual should confront injustice have been debated for years. Maybe there is no answer to the questions, only thoughts and ideas. Either way, many authors including have used their medium to present their ideas on the subject to the world, including John Steinbeck and his great American novel, Grapes of Wrath. wbarloon per. 3