P3+LAtwood


 * __The Grapes of Wrath Unit Synthesis Essay__**

Many people wonder what is right and what is wrong. In //The Grapes of Wrath// by John Steinbeck, //Civil Disobedience// by Henry Thoreau, and //The Way We Lie// by Stefanie Ericsson, people are faced with making decisions based on what is right and what is wrong in their eyes. Another role that is examined is the role of an individual in confronting injustice. The need for survival as well as the public opinion shapes our persona on what is right and what is wrong. In //The Grapes of Wrath//, farmers were left in the path of destruction left by the Great Depression. This left farmers without profit, leaving the land owners to make a decision on what to do. The owners of the land needed to survive just as much as the farmers did. The owners “hated what they had to do, and were angry because they had to be cruel” and force the farmer to move off the land (Steinbeck). The instinct of survival was so great to the owners that they had to go against what they believed was wrong. The price to pay was the farmers’ way of living and the basis of their survival. The owners knew what they did was wrong, which is why several worshipped the mathematics because it allowed for the decision to be out of their hands (Steinbeck). The need for survival allowed for the owners to go on their instincts and not their emotions. If the owners went off of their emotions, then the farmers would still be on their own land. The need for survival is so great that it allows for people to justify their wrong choices. In //The Grapes of Wrath//, the land once belonging to farmers was slowly destroyed by tractors. There were men driving the tractors though, and the need for survival was driving the men. The men had to act like machines in order to not think consciously about the horrible thing that they were doing: destroying another family’s way of life in order to allow their own family to survive. “When the corrugated iron doors are shut, he goes home, and his home is not the land” (Steinbeck). At the end of the day, the men only worry about their family and treat the land that they destroy like land, not like a previous family’s land. This is the survival instinct rather than by thinking over logically. If the men driving the tractors were to think about what they were doing, then their own family would not survive. This need for survival made the tractor drivers believe that their work of destruction was justified, while they knew that it was truly wrong. //The Grapes of Wrath//, shows how migrants and immigrants were being constantly exploited by people that were better off than they were. The people who exploited others did what they did because they knew that the others were desperate for survival, and they knew that they could get away with it. Migrants would want to sell their property in order to make some money. Often times the migrants would sell their things for much less than they were worth, and they did because they needed the money (Steinbeck). This shows how desperate the migrants were for money and how others exploited them. The migrants and immigrants were treated horribly because better off people thought little of them, almost not treating them like people at all. “[The migrants and immigrants] don’t know what to do with good wages. Why, look how they live. Look how they eat” (Steinbeck). People would think little of the migrants and immigrants in order to think that they were more superior, therefore letting themselves think that it was alright to treat them horribly and to exploit them. This is a poor excuse for such horrible things. The people know what they are doing is wrong, but because society allows things like this to happen, people continue to mistreat others. During the Great Depression, several people were left starving, while others lived happily with plenty of food to eat. Steinbeck shows the suffering of the daily life of immigrants and migrants as they search for a way of survival. “A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains” (Steinbeck). When kerosene was sprayed on the fruit, it was out of selfish reasons that the crop owners might loose profit and they didn’t want the migrants or immigrants to get the fruit. The migrants and immigrants needed to survive, it was their human instincts to do so. “The children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange” (Steinbeck). This shows how inhumane the crop owners were, as well as how the immigrant and migrants suffered. “In the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath” (Steinbeck). The immigrants and migrants that were treated inhumanly were beginning to grow angrier at the people who treated them so badly. There was now a need for people to stand up for themselves and for their survival. In //Civil Disobedience: Part 1,// Thoreau tries to explain the citizens role with the government. People have a right to disagree with their government. “All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable” (Thoreau). This shows that if people believe that they are being put under control by a tyrant, they have a right to revolt and protest against them. This is important in the way that people live their lives for the better of themselves, as well as for other’s lives. This allows them to make the decision on what to do when faced with a tyrant leader. The need for survival might often drive this decision. In //Civil Disobedience: Part 2//, Thoreau explains the role that people play when confronting something that is unjust and not right. Sometimes there are tyrant governments that control what people can and cannot do. “Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?" (Thoreau). This is a rhetorical question to try and show that people need to stand up against a tyrant government. If people were to not go against something that was wrong, then they would continue to suffer. By people not doing anything to stop bad things from happening, they are being part of the problem by accepting it. It is a person’s responsibility to stand up against injustice. In //The Way We Lie//, Ericsson explains why people lie and why people act the way that they do. It also explains how people can get caught up in others lies. “You’ve got to stand for something or you’ll fall for anything” (Ericsson). If you do not stand for anything, then you will always fall for a lie or things that are untrue. If citizens of a country know things about the world around them, then they cannot be easily tricked by a tyrant government into doing something that they would normally not do. To not stand for anything would mean that a person would be easily susceptible to persuasion.  In human nature, our basic human instinct is survival. In times or hardships, people must turn to their human instincts in order to block out information that might cause their survival to be in jeopardy. Survival changed peoples’ perspectives on what was right and wrong. As times got tougher for people during the Great Depression, people had more of a need of survival. People that were more well off than others took advantage of people, causing deaths and growing anger in them. It is the responsibility of the people being oppressed to not fall for lies and to stand up against injustice.