Community In John Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath

Community is a theme which permeates the three American writers use their texts as vehicles which transport the reader on a journey, both literally and metaphorically; on this journey their very beliefs and outlooks are challenged and altered along the way. The writers generate altered perspectives using literary techniques such as changing narrative viewpoints. They illustrate to the reader the capacity for lack of compassion among humans. These differing perspectives serve two purposes: so the reader shares the sense of disconnection the characters feel towards others. And to share the sense of compassion the characters feel, be it inherent or found along their journey. As the characters are compassionate to others, despite their disconnection

The Californians label the immigrants as ‘Okies’ and ‘outsiders’ who aren’t welcome to the state. “Them Goddamn Okies got no sense and no feeling. They ain’t human (…) Why, Jesus they’re as dangerous as niggers in the South.” As the character uses the derogatory term ‘nigger’ and compares the Oklahomans, to whom the reader is empathetically attached, to the equally prejudiced ‘niggers in the south’ or African Americans, he highlights the human tendency to discriminate against the unknown; the other. There is a certain irony created here, as at the year of the books publishing (1939) racism was at its height, and African Americans were the least dangerous race. This lack of compassion is also embodied by Will Feeley, who ploughs the fields using a tractor and whose three dollars a day mean “a hundred people have to go out and wander on the roads”. When confronted to think of others he replies “Can’t think of that. Got to think of my own

When the cannibals, known as ‘the bad guys’ walk past they are described as ‘An army… marching past… a phalanx carrying spears or lances’ with ‘wagons drawn by slaves in harness and piled with goods of war’. McCarthy has used a metaphor, linking the convoy of men to an army, to make them different from the reader and thus establish a divide between the reader and the cannibals, like the man and boy have done. Despite their differences becoming exaggerated by McCarthy, the cannibals share similarities with the man and the boy; they all suffer the grey apocalyptic world, they all travel on the open road and all do what is necessary for survival. Like the ‘bad guys’ who resort to cannibalism for survival, the man resorts to what is necessary for his and the boy’s survival; he kills a man with a pistol, and another with a flare gun. He also chooses to not help some people, as doing so would affect their well-being. “Can’t we help him papa? / No. We can’t help him.” Like Will Feeley in In ‘The Road’ the man only cares for his close family and lacks the ability to feel compassion towards anyone else. Steven Frye states that “the novel is a narrative of the soul’s nature: its moral embodiment in human form; its visibility in human action, whether in acts of brutality or self-sacrifice”” this is