Injustice In Zoot Suit

In Zoot Suit by Luis Valdez, the author communicates the larger idea that violence is the result of injustice in a given system by including scenes in which Henry is about to kill Rafas at the Saturday night dance, strikes a guard and gets sent to solitary, and is reported to have gone back to prison, killed an inmate, and gotten into drugs.
From the beginning of the play, Henry succumbs to using violence due to being excluded from society. When Lieutenant Smith tries to interrogate Henry and insults his zoot suit, calling it a “monkey suit”, Henry reacts with verbal violence- “Screw you flatfoot”; he reacted in this manor because his cultural identity was attacked by an authority figure, which shows corruption with authority and those who hold power. This prompts violence from Henry

When the court goes to recess, Henry turns furiously to Alice and says he “don’t want to hear it”, an example of verbal violence due to anger, because the Press accused Henry of brutally killing Jose Williams and the judge took the side of the jury and overstepped his bounds of power by treating the gang and Henry unfairly. Henry reacted violently because this was a case in which many authority figures were openly discriminating against him simply because of his ethnicity in a professional setting. Furthermore, Henry is later provoked by a guard to attack him so that he will be viewed as a murderer by the public and will remain in jail. Henry strikes the guard because the guard tauntingly asks if Henry thinks he himself is “something special”, which shows that this assault was only prompted by corruption within the system of justice and unfair treatment; he chooses not to remain calm because being provoked by authority has become to recurrent and