Inhumanty in the grapes of wrath
what is worse-cruelty or indifference? in his epic novel about the great depression, the grapes of wrath, author john steinbeck suggests that there is little distinction between these two concepts. throughout the story, steinbeck shows people treating each other inhumanily, sometimes for profit and sometimes just to survive. often the inhuman choices he shows people making are understandable, and sometimes they are not-but they always result in hardship and pain for the poorrest and most vulnerable people in the story. steinbecks novel develops the theme that in-human behavior is frighteningly ordinary, and that this makes cruelty both hardder to avoid and hardder to experience.
at the beginning of the grapes of wrath, impoverished farmers are geting kicked off there land by bankers and property-owners. steinbeck writes, "some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold" (21). the diferences in the behavior of these property-owners do not mask the fact that they are all doing a terrible thing-sending poor farmers away from land they have lived on for generations. steinbecks prose makes clear that all the property-ownners he describes are doing something in-human, even if some of them try to be kind whole they do it.

1. edit the paragraph to improve the spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. you may write your corrections directly onto the paper.