Reincarnation

Definition Paper going hand in hand with glimpses of how it relates to The Grapes of Wrath

Reincarnation

Oppression, you pray on us when we sleep. Oppression, you chase after the tired the poor the weak. Oppression, you know you mean only harm.” �"Ben Harper

The song, written by Ben Harper, gives a glimpse into the tenacious grasp oppression has on its helpless victims. Its literal definition is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as something unjust or a cruel exercise of authority. The brutality prowls within every generation, and can be seen as an art form of selfishness,  the breeze felt on an individual’s backside, the illuminating burn of a novel, and the parched aroma of the decaying lost souls filling a survivor’s nostril. Festering on the canvas of a book, among paper and ink words in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, which portrays devious abuse during the great depression; delineating Oppressions lowest expression, “There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success” (Steinbeck 264).

The Joad family became haunted by an obscured slavery that served to dehumanize when they were bereaved the right to property, and could no longer be worrisome of their emotive contended state. At this moment the reader encounters the creation of oppression, being that an individual’s life will be examined by authoritative figures, and eventually themselves, without value. Tom Joad, a man of once of self-integrity, finds himself confronted with a deprived value as a human being, “They killed ‘im. Busted his head. I was  standin’ there. I went nuts. Grabbed the pick handle…I-I clubbed a guy” (Steinbeck 412). Tom’s reaction easily becomes a crucial consequence as a result of injustice. Oppression forces impact on one’s self to become deformed from a human into an earthly, impulsive creature. The maltreatment eradicates the boundary between animal and human, “In the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for vintage.” (Steinbeck 264).

Multiplication of adverse animosity is detrimental to those oppressed, and the oppressor. It is considerably conspicuous in the relation shared with the California originals, and the migrants of the Dust Bowl, otherwise known as the “Okies “. The relationship between the two is undoubtedly rocky; in other words "They hate you 'cause they're scairt. They know a hungry fella gonna get food even if he got to take it. They know that fallow lan' s a sin an' somebody' gonna take it" (Steinbeck 262). Combined, both administer to threaten what is essential for one another to get through their overgrowing hardships, creating the existence of their impoverishment. The word poverty brings about a sort of scheme when concerning oppression. Due to the fact that the amount of wealth in their society was transferred downward, the development of knowledge in every day life quickly decreased. As a result the overall populations’ standard of intelligence was lowered. This was the strategy seen out by the tycoon oppressors of the Great Depression, and by their hand, prejudice became increasingly common. Their ratiocination is made clear throughout the novel the Grapes of Wrath; if the impoverished citizens are in a state of competition amongst themselves, and truly accept the idea that the poor circumstances are a result of the inhabitance of fellow poverty stricken, if the needy consume the belief that removal of their so called enemies would lead to the end of their indigence state, then the impoverished will no longer have the devotion or outrage to pursue their hatred towards the wealthy force.

Oppression not only infest in the world around us, but also in the paper-universe; cutting belligerently through the spine of a novel, searing into it like a flare of blazing fire, and leaving only a corpse of an entity that had once been breathtakingly  alluring. Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrathgives an intrusive look through the tears created by oppression, how it can tear those in the same conditions apart, either with its demeaning characteristic by altering a human into an animalistic condition, or its scheming,  carelessly formed  enmity.