Criminality Flashcards
Freedom can make you lonely. Routine drives loneliness away.
[Tom Joad:] “He says it makes him feel lonesome out there in the open havin’ to think what to do next. So he stole a car an’ come back.”
Prison sounds glorious compared to the dismal places that the Joads must live. In fact, it almost seems like Weedpatch.
“You eat regular, an’ get clean clothes, and there’s places to take a bath.”
Is murder a bad thing when the alternative is starvation?
“[a tenant farmer:] I don’t aim to starve to death before I kill the man that’s starving me.”
Ma Joad has to learn how to think like a prisoner in order to cope with life. Going to prison has taught Tom some valuable life lessons.
She is a prisoner to the trauma that life throws at her, and she never thinks of getting out, that’s why she is so stable.
“I’m a-gonna tell you somepin about bein’ in the pen. You can’t go thinkin’ when you’re gonna be out. You’d go nuts.”
The confusing law system of America
“Sometimes you do a crime, an’ you don’t even know it’s bad.”
The laws of society do not mean anything when society is falling apart at the seams.
“If they were shot at, they did not run, but splashed sullenly away”
The concept of crime is complicated in The Grapes of Wrath, because if many of these guys don’t commit a crime, they will die. Crime is the only choice
Metaphor
“to beg for rotting vegetables, to steal when they could.”
If people abide by the laws and act like good citizens, they will die. WE CAN’T HELP BREAKING THE LAW
[Mrs. Wainwright:] “They’s lots of things ‘gainst the law that we can’t he’p doin’.”
