SHARKS' TEETH Langston Carter

The day we found the sharks' teeth was foggy and cool. Moisture hung in the air so thick you could almost see it sparkling in the dim sunlight. There were days, early in the summer like this one, where it seemed there was more water in the air than in the bay. We had beached the boat and stepped out on the recently cleared spit of land. The ground had a light dusting of white sand over an under layer of dried black mud. It looked like a recently frosted chocolate cake, though the frosting was spread a bit thin for my taste. The ground was solid, but we knew from experience that it was full of fiddler crab holes, and would be underwater at the first super-high tide. Mysteriously, to us anyway, someone wanted to build a house there.

We often came to these spots to look for artifacts. Our beach, our summer home, had been a fishing camp for as long as anyone living could remember. The oldest stories told of travelers coming down to the edge of the sea, lining up to fill their wagon beds with salted fish to take back home. Old decaying cabins still lined the beach. Rotting nets, hung out to dry in the last century, decorated their weathered walls. Their broken faces spun stories in our minds. The fishermen who, tanned and wrinkled from sun and salt, hauled their nets full of splashing mullet in to cheers from the waiting crowds. The bounty of the sea lightened everyone's hearts, and the smell of roasting fish filled the damp air. Women fanned themselves from wagon seats. Children splashed in the shallow edges of the bay. It was a scene we had acted out as youngsters, building an imaginary bridge to a life we would never fully know.

Read this sentence from the text:

Their broken faces spun stories in our minds.

What is the main effect of the word faces in this sentence?

It creates a feeling of despair.
It creates the idea of something watching.
It suggests the narrator has great fears.
It implies a sense of history.

Steinbeck defines dignity in The Harvest Gypsies as "[…] a register of a man's responsibility to community" (39).  This sense of responsibility is of the utmost importance, according to Steinbeck, for maintaining the human spirit and a sense of decency and ethics.  The atrocious, inhumane treatment of the migrants, ranging from forced starvation to terror tactics, results in the complete "destruction of dignity," which Steinbeck calls "[…] one of the most regrettable results of the migrant's life" (39).  Steinbeck warns such a loss results in a sullen anger that makes men prone to lashing out at the social system.  He writes, "A man herded about, surrounded by armed guards, starved and forced to live in filth loses his dignity; that is, he loses his valid position in regard to society, and consequently his whole ethics towards society" (39).

Repeatedly Steinbeck advocates the restoration of the migrants' dignity as the number one priority of relief efforts.  Integral to that restoration is re-establishing a sense of civic duty and responsibility.  Steinbeck champions the "responsible self-government" of the federal camps as the answer to successfully integrating the migrants into California life and eliminating perceived threats of violence, labor organization, and disease.  He writes, "The sullen and frightened expression that is the rule among the migrants has disappeared from the faces of the federal camp inhabitants.  Instead there is a steadiness of gaze and a self-confidence that can only come of restored dignity" (41).   Steinbeck reminds readers that the migrants are American citizens, having come from a proud agrarian history of civic and church duty.  Abject poverty and the constant threat of starvation have destroyed the migrants' spirit as they are overcome by first shame, then hopelessness, and ultimately indifference.  Steinbeck concludes that replacing that indifference with a renewed sense of community responsibility is crucial for restoring the migrants as functional citizens of the United States.

Vigilantism

As does In Dubious Battle (1936) and The Grapes of Wrath (1939), The Harvest Gypsies characterizes vigilante violence as a terrible scourge that threatens the very social and political fabric of the nation.  Steinbeck shows how the powerful growers, in their arrogance, flout the laws of the United States and employ vigilante violence as a means of cowing the migrants.  He argues the growers, in their proliferation of vigilantism, are in direct violation of criminal syndicalism laws that prohibit the use of organized violence in industry.  Steinbeck quotes Hugh T. Osburne, representative of the Imperial Valley Associated Farmers, as saying: "In Imperial Valley we don't need this criminal syndicalism law.  They have got to have it for the rest of the counties that don't know how to handle these matters.  We don't need it because we have worked out our own way of handling these things.  We won't have another of these trials.  We have a better way of doing it.  Trials cost too much" (37).

That better way, according to Steinbeck, is herding the migrants about under the constant threat of violence designed to keep them in a perpetual state of fear.  In turn, that fear feeds increased suspicion and anger between the land owners and migrants perpetuating a cycle of escalating violence and oppression.  It is a situation, Steinbeck argues, that cannot persist, for it "[…] has accomplished nothing but unrest, tension and hatred.  A continuation of this approach constitutes a criminal endangering of the peace of the state" (37).  Steinbeck concludes that growers and vigilantes must be brought to justice under the nation's laws in order to protect that integrity of the government.  

Explanation:

a. the scene is structured as a dialogue between two characters in their own informal language.

what lesson are you referencing?