Question # 2 1987 AP Exam

Question #2

Steinbeck consistently and woefully points to the fact that the migrants’ great suffering is caused not by bad weather or mere misfortune but by their fellow human beings. Historical, social, and economic circumstances separate people into rich and poor, landowner and tenant, and the people in the dominant roles struggle viciously to preserve their positions. "The Grapes of Wrath" is a perfect of man's inhumanity to man. Throughout this book the attitudes of the Joad family change in both a political and social way.

The Joad family comes to hate the government  after they get kicked out of there own house and are forced to move west due to work located in California. On there way to California they come crossed a lot police men from the different counties that they come from. It gets worse the closer they get to California, where police men are beating up, with the help of the locals, the men from out of state looking for Jobs after coming west. The police beat these men and don't care about it and don't pursue the criminal. They lose faith in the government because the government is who controls these agencies that are making mugging and murder.

The way the Joad family social change is not as far fetch as their attitudes toward the government. The Joad's are moving far from where they were born and raise and have to change along with the cultural differences in California compared to Oklahoma. The Joad family has to do what ever they can to make ends meat, so the idea of a new job forty miles north doesn't sound so far away. they have to get used to the harassment of the law enforcement no matter where they go in California. They social change because of the differences of cultural clashes.

Throughout the book the Joad make many attitude changes about the government and their social reality. This help the reader understand the background of where the family came from and see what they have to change during their long journey.The novel draws a simple line through the population—one that divides the privileged from the poor—and identifies that division as the primary source of evil and suffering in the world.