The Grapes of Wrath

     Over the summer, I read The Grapes of Wrath. The Grapes of Wrath has many main themes, but in this response, I would like to focus on 2 in particular. The first one would probably be the theme of discrimination, as in California there was a lot of discrimination against "okies". The second would probably be poverty, as they were all being pushed out by banks and tractors.
     On the theme of discrimination. The theme of discrimination happens all through the last 250 pages of the book. While they are trying to work in the peach fields, the administration of the field made the wage unbearable, to the point where you could not feed your family off of that. They lowered the wage because in their eyes the "okies" were sub-human. Also, in the hoovervilles, the police were abusive to the Oklahomans, because they were a scapegoat for their problems. This in my opinion because when any hard times appear, someone is going to blame it on a person or group of people. We can also infer that it was partially the peach field owners greed, and partially their anger as well that made them discriminatory. In the book, protesters are slaughtered, and unions ripped brick from brick because people are having a hard time adjusting to the reality of a hard time. The police officers just don't want to deal with this struggle.
     The second theme is poverty. All of these families are going halfway across the nation, because their property was disowned, only to find work that practically would give 1 person 5 cents an hour. But they still graciously accept the slower embrace of starvation rather than accepting their impending doom. They are promised wages of 50 cents an hour, and receive 10 cents. The people in hoovervilles are willing to scrape the bottoms of boxcars for dust, which they make "fried dough" from. These people are changing in a different way to hard times. While the native Californians are demanding more, the Oklahomans are accepting less. They have nothing to return to, so what else can they do besides scraping the bottom of the  barrel? They react by going completely to the other side of the spectrum of madness. But, their efforts are valiant, and they, though crazy, are deserving of respect.
     These themes are really what ran rampant all through California in that time period. These reactions really shaped the story. The thing we have to take from this is to , when times are hard, do not support a scapegoat, or accept being one. Although the Oklahomans had no choice, if more of the Californians had stood up for them, maybe they would have been in a better situations. And their efforts would be almmost as valiant as preacher Culver's, who was willing to die for his cause, or Tom's, who was willing to kill for his.