Father Figure In John Steinbeck's A Gathering Of Old Men

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In the book, A Gathering of Old Men, a white woman named Candy says that she, “will not let them hurt my people,” talking about safeguarding the blacks which live on her father’s land. Candy wishes to protect them due to the fact that one of the blacks, named Mathu, was her father figure as she was growing up, and now he could be in trouble both physically and with the law. When Candy refers to them as her people, she is not wrong in doing so because of her relationship with Mathu. With Mathu being her father figure, she could see the black community on her father’s land not as property, but as her true family; instead of her genetic family. Candy is protecting them not because she feels guilty about what her forefathers have done, but because