Similarities Between Grapes Of Wrath And Civil Disobedience

The debate between what can be deemed right and what can be considered as wrong has been a discussion of societal morality for quite some time. In all honesty, this question of the boundaries of morality is up to each individual and their distinct ethics. In John Steinbeck’s novel, The Grapes of Wrath, and Henry Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience, we see an instructed role for the characters. Both texts depict the character’s responsibility to decide for themselves the ethics of things, whether it is just or unjust, in accordance with their moral values. The individuals have two roles; the first is to confront injustices when they are involved. The second role of the individual is to protect; protect their neighbors, protect themselves, protect their

family from the injustices faced by society.
In Steinbeck’s novel, The Grapes of Wrath, we see that the farmers are being treated unjustly by the government. As an individual in the face of injustice, it was the farmer's role to confront the government because “If you are being cheated out of a single dollar by your neighbor, you take effectual steps at once to […] see that you are never cheated again.” (Civil Disobedience, Thoreau). In this quote from Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience Series, he is emphasizing a person’s right to stand up for themselves in the occurrence of injustice, so that they can, hopefully, ensure that they are not met with the same injustice again. This ideology is used a lot in the Grapes of Wrath, such as when the Joad’s, a family of farmers, are being forced to vacate their home. Ma Joad, the mother of the Joad boys, before now has “never had [her] house pushed over, […or her] family stuck out on the road,” (Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath 9) which shows that the woman notices the injustices being forced upon her and her family while also showing the want to stand up for what is hers in the midst of a debate surrounding whether to give up and let themselves be a victim of the injustice or to fight, and inevitably still face the injustice. The decision, though a difficult one, is to leave their land and head to California in the hopes of building a new life in California; however, they are unprepared for what the long road ahead has waiting for them. When the Joad’s make the decision to abandon their farm, the newly evacuated farm is referenced to as death whose “heat goes out of it like the living heat that leaves a corpse.” (Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, 11). Though the Joad’s decide against confronting the injustices, they had the chance and the choice to do so. In this scenario, the government failed the Joad’s because of the consequences they would face if they had confronted the government, because of their status as a migrant to the United States.
Every individual faces an abundance of challenges in their lives, as portrayed by the traveling turtle in chapter three of The Grapes of Wrath.

As the turtle is attempting to cross a road, an obstacle in the way of the turtle, it’s “back legs [go] to work straining like elephant legs,” (Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath,3) as he struggles along his path as one car swerves to avoid hitting it while another car swerves to intentionally hit the turtle. The avoiding car is a symbolic representation of the farmers and the supporters of immigrant workers while the car that aims to hit the turtle is symbolic of the big businesses and the banks. With this analogy, Steinbeck alludes to how individuals can fight for injustice, but an individual’s fight can be drowned out by the fight of a group because there is strength in numbers, and frankly big businesses have more influence than an individual. In chapter five, Steinbeck refers to the individual as a whole unit, and if they worked together, they could accomplish many things, such as standing up against injustice. This view describes the collective fear of American farmers who were worried about the immigrant farmers prospering because then they would be a force of their own to be reckoned with in a time where immigrants were viewed as less than Americans. A parallel to the interactions between Americans and immigrants can be seen in On Compassion by Barbara Ascher with the interactions between those who have money and those who are poor, homeless. Showing compassion to the homeless man would be a fight against the injustices in America such as when the woman on the street corner “finds what she is looking for [in her purse] and passes a folded dollar over her child’s head to the man who stands and stares.” (Ascher, On Compassion). The author makes it a point to question the action of this woman, was it an act done out of fear of the man who “does not know that acceptance of the gift and gratitude are what makes [the] transaction

complete,” (Ascher, On Compassion) and a hopeful way of getting the man to go on his way, or was it an act of pure compassion to help the man and acknowledge the injustices that he faces on a daily basis? Both pieces of literature acknowledge a general American fear of migrants, no matter what ethnicity they are, and exemplify the injustices faced by such people, like the man who was not necessarily in search of the woman’s aid but was held prejudice to such a stereotype because of the way that he looks and dresses.
The human individual has the gift of individuality and a functioning ability to make decisions based on their moral standings. Because people have the ability to think for themselves, it is feared when people with like morals join forces, because we have more strength in numbers. As seen in the writings of Steinbeck, Thoreau, and Ascher, we know that the individual plays whatever role in confronting injustices that they see fit. Steinbeck demonstrates this through a family of farmers who is shown injustice by the government meant to aid them and their long journey to California. Thoreau demonstrates the instructed role of the individual as one that fights for injustices involving them directly, which also includes the injustice done on those cared about by the individual. Ascher describes the injustice faced by the less fortunate and the fact that some people don’t help them to aid them in their fight against injustice, or just out of the kindness of their heart, but rather out of fear of them, and what they could do because of the generalized stereotype that surrounds those who come from a less fortunate background.