Chapter fourteen of Grapes of Wrath particularly struck me in its truth. The very beginning paragraph is talking about how the western states are growing nervous with all the pressure of the millions of people migrating there to seek refuge and fulfillment. It seems to be a huge burden as the population multiplies and the land fills with people desperate for help. But still, the chapter discusses how it is in these things that we place our hope. For as long as there are people out there striving to do what needs to be done to advance the world, everything will be okay as the following passage indicates:
"For man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his accomplishments. This you may say of man - when theories change and crash, when schools, philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of thought, national, religious, economic, grow and disintegrate, man reaches, stumbles forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes. Having stepped forward, he may slip back, but only half a step, never a full step back. This you may say and know it and know it. This you may know when the bombs plummet out of the black planes on the market place, when prisoners are stuck like pigs, when the crushed bodies drain filthily in the dust. You may know it in this way. If the step were not being taken, if the stumbling forward ache were not alive, the boms would not fall, the throats would not be cut. Dread the time when the bombs stop falling while the bombers live - for every bomb is proof that the spirit has not died."
And although not many people think of war and all the unspeakable things that are detailed above as good things, the author makes a good poitn when he talks about how all of these horrible things are necessary evils in that they mean that men are striving to take steps forward. And that is incredibly important.
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