Capitalism In John Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath

The novel The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck is set in a time during the great depression, in a poor farming town where everyone is reliant on one another for their own survival. During a tough summer of farming due to dust suffocating large numbers of crops, families are struggling to survive. When the large companies that own the land realize it would be more profitable to evict the current residents and farm it all with large machinery many families are forced to leave their homes of many generations and travel halfway across the country to support their families. We see many examples of man’s inhumanity to man and greed throughout the course of this novel.

"There is only one way in which one can endure man's inhumanity towards man and that is to try, in ones own life, to exemplify man's humanity to man." Alon Palon said this in regard to humanity, and characters such as Louis Zamperini, the Joad family, and many of those who lived through the dust bowl experienced antipathy from others, but also exemplified benevolence to those in need.

Similar to a cactus’ bloom in the heat of the desert, through adversity humanity prospers and processes. Society, as a whole, has experienced, at least once, hardships in their lifetime, and through these trying situations people acquire compassion. Being familiar with challenges, people more readily accepts the distress of others and offer required assistance during times of difficulty. Although adversity is seen as the creator of contempt and hatred because of its negative effects on mentality, adversity fosters compassion through the creation of empathy, morality, and association in a person with others in a calamity.

During the Great Depression, many citizens faced an arduous lifestyle of unemployment. However, many people managed to entertain themselves by reading literature such as The Grapes of Wrath. John Steinbeck witnessed an injustice towards farmers during the Great Depression, and this inspired Steinbeck to present his perspective of the maltreatment to the open through The Grapes of Wrath. The fictional novel describes how unfortunate conditions, during the Great Depression, force an Oklahoma farmer family to travel to California in search for an easy life, job opportunities, and a bright future. John Steinbeck represented and connected his tones through his trope, making it an excellent read. In the novel, The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck is the renowned author of novels such as Of Mice and Men, East of Eden, and The Pearl. In his novel The Grapes of Wrath Steinbeck expounds on the theme of the cruelty people inflict on one another as well as how they can overcome the inhumanity of others. Steinbeck’s artfully demonstrates that this cruelty is often born out of the human tendency to think of oneself first; others, if they are thought of at all, come second.

In the Grapes of Wrath, tenants are forced off their land because of financial problems. Because of little wealth, a family encounters hardships and the struggle to survive. The crops are failing to produce money which causes no other choice to borrow money from the bank. In this chapter, money is the resource of surviving for not only this family but for other families, including the bank. Without money, families are forced off their land, the bank would die off, and it would be hard to support a family. John’s use of repetitive diction, conveys a message that without money, life is nearly inevitable.

In his book, Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck portrays that capitalism is a good economic and political structure, yet at the same time, it has its own weaknesses. Capitalism allows the citizens under the control of the government to pursue any career they want, and it provides motivation for people to work. Steinbeck shows through his two main characters, George Milton and Lennie Small, that living under the umbrella that is a capitalist government provides motivation in that one can work as hard and as long as they can, and in return, they can earn more money, and eventually work their way up to the top of the “social ladder”. George and Lennie not only receive motivation from their paycheck that they will receive at the end of the month,

The 1930’s era was an incredibly tumultuous time for the United States. The stock market crash of 1929 and the Dust Bowl exacerbated the already high tensions between the rich and the poor. These tensions were also present and becoming a growing problem within the justice system of this era. As the country plunged into the depths of the Depression, the poor treatment of men and women imprisoned within the country’s jails deteriorated as well. The Dust Bowl along with the economic conditions the country, at the time led to the disparate treatment of prisoners at this time. Prejudices against certain groups of people during this time were very strong. This prejudice was demonstrated in John Steinbeck’s, The Grapes of Wrath, especially

This secures a definite parallel to Jesus Christ and not only Jim Casy, but the entire book, The Grapes of Wrath. The rich people, banks, owners, and institutions have taken control of the country and nature, but as the book says, "And the association of owners knew that some day the praying would stop. And there's an end." This means that these people will always carry on, one day they will take action, there will be a fight, and quite possibly an end to the misfortune and a reign of prevailing prosperity. Christ once said, "When thou makest a dinner or supper, call not...thy rich neighbors...But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind: and thou shalt be blessed." John Steinbeck and Jim Casy along with many other migrants believe in charity, helping others and an end to the insatiable appetite for money and self-indulgence. When Casy is saying grace in chapter eight, he compares himself to Jesus: "I been in the hills, thinkin', almost you might say like Jesus wen into the wilderness to think His way out of troubles." Casy was beginning to feel confused, troubled and stressful about his faith, but when he went into the wilderness and rediscovered nature, he was a new man with a new-found faith. (Eventually Christ was no longer a Jew and strayed from the traditional Hebrew idea of God. Casy's beliefs did not precisely follow Christianity.) Like Christ, Casy was jailed and later aroused the

In America, most of our parents at a very early age that we should be grateful for what we have. Even with these teachings Americans are finding it hard to do just that. American Capitalism is built off of the concept that anybody can buy property, open a practice/start a business, and profit off of it. One thing that both “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald and “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck teach us is that the system of American capitalism isn’t perfect. Both of these books show both sides of capitalism, those who make it and those who don’t. In both books the rich are ignoring the bad things they inflict on the poor because it makes them richer and more powerful. As Rick Danko said, “As time goes on we get closer to that

In 2008, Rudra Sabaratnam, the CEO of the City of Angels Medical Center, committed health care fraud when he attempted to extort money from Medicare and Medi-Cal. He was wealthy, yet, his greed for more money led him to cheat the taxpayer-funded healthcare programs of millions of dollars, depriving the people who actually need the help and money. The greed that Sabaratnam had was partly caused by the profit seeking capitalist system. The desire for wealth in capitalist society leads to corruption and causes a divide between the rich and the poor, so perhaps a system that supports equality and fairness is a better choice. The Eastern-European expression,“Capitalism is man exploiting man; communism is just the opposite,” summarizes one of

and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. .. It has agglomerated population, centralized means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands" (Marx, 3). In the true Marxist style, the banks and upper class act as the bourgeoisie to the migrant proletariat.

A constant theme throughout the entirety of the story of Grapes of Wrath is the corruption of the government and police officers. This corruption appears in the beginning through the banks taking the land from the farmers, and once the Joads reach California, it appears there and throughout the rest of the story as the police and business owners. The officers beat them, and through the people into their cars just because the business owner's point their fingers. This happens more than a few times within the pages of the story, and the brutality given by the police to the “crime” doers is the cause of the death of Jim Casy, which had an impact on me as the reader, because he was my personal favorite character throughout the mess of the Joad family’s trip.

In The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck develops the theme of a shift from self-interests to communal interests, which he explained as a movement from “I” to “we.” While this theme can be applied effortlessly in Steinbeck’s reality, it does not apply well with daily life, and even the United States itself was founded on principles of rugged individualism and self-concern. Even today I see rugged individualism and self-interest over communal good in numerous examples: the way people place their burdens on others, the unfortunate reality of our governments good intended policies and debt, and a man short on cash that was asked to leave the building. In the novel, when Al and Mae are working in their diner, a father and his two sons approached

Homelessness is just one of the social issues that are displayed in the novel. John Steinbeck focus on families that are homeless and have nowhere to go. The ex-pastor Casey was just one of the family people and families that were affected in the novel by being homeless. Mostly everyone is homeless, and due to the bankers powerful role, it makes it that much harder to live in the novel: “They breath profits they eat the interest on the money. If they don’t get it, they die the way you die without air, with out side-meat”( Steinbeck 35). This quotes shows us that the bankers did anything to get to the money of the people and the farmers. All the farmers should have collaborated together as one to fight against the businessmen and bankers. The farmers went West and left with close to nothing. Many people died in the novel including grandpa and grandma who die on the quest of getting to California. Families in the novel also had children that were dying of starvation. “How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own