The Theory of Inevitable Self Systematic Destruction: something I created in ninth grade. It states that no system can last indefinitely; from Elementary School gangs to full scale governments, all corrupt or become out-dated, members will always revolt or secede, and through any means possible, any system left to itself will eventually destroy itself.This is what has happened in The Grapes of Wrath. The corruption? Private corporations being placed above individual welfare, defying the Declaration of Independence and the Enlightenment ideas that the nation was founded upon, of all citizens having the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The tenant farmers’ land was not owned by them, and subsequently when the organizations owning the land were not making the profits they needed, the tenant farmers were scrapped. The farmers now flocked in mass towards the fallacy of a promised land called California; a land stolen from the Mexicans, who stole it from the natives, who stole it from rival tribes for millennia before the eventual ruling nation would control the region. The businesses abuse the dilemma, as we see with the car dealer scamming desperate families. The Californians do not understand what is happening. In their eyes it is as if the tenant farmers are greedy savages, who once discovered the wages and work in California, swarmed like a million insects to the harvest. Drastic measures were taken, ridiculous accusations of communist tendencies of any man woman or child who aligned themselves into a union against their oppressors.
But truly, can blame be attributed to anyone? It is not one tribe’s fault that fellow tribes wanted their land and resources. It is not the natives’ fault that Mexico wanted the land. It is not Mexico’s fault that the citizens of America wanted the land. It is not the land’s fault that it must be starved of nutrients. What caused the dust bowl? The farmers dug up and killed all the locust larvae in the ground, and from that point onward the land was never the same. So the farmers caused their own demise. But if they hadn’t, then the crops would have been consumed by pests. This novel is about human injustice to one another, but this scenario is another link in the long chain of horrors to occur to humankind. Humans will worry and care for each other, and in the oddest ways; but when caring for others interferes with caring for yourself and for your family and for your loved ones, well then tough shit neighbors, I have my own clan to protect. What is reality? Reality is our individual view on life and the world. Reality varies from person to person. Reality is not constant. To sum it all into one statement; reality is subjective based upon perspective. From the Oklahoma land owners’ perspectives, the bank owning the land could not survive without the profits, and the farmers were not making any profit for the bank. To the farmers, the bank is driving them from their lives and killing them. To the police and land owners in California, the migrants organizing into unions are trying to undermine the monopolistic hierarchy of the region with communist ideas. To the migrant unionists, the land owners deceived them, and now their families and loved ones and selves are dying. To the citizens of America, they need the foreign land of the west to prosper. To the Native Americans, the new people were intruders and thieves. Too often people get so caught up in their own perspective that they forget that there are other shoes to walk in, other roads to travel, other lights to see. The system collapses, the ordered chaos breaks its confines, death, destruction, and desolation sweep the land. Blood is shed. Innocents die. Guilty prosper. The corruption continues as it has and always will until the system of life itself dies. There no longer hope for a pre-dead world. There is no longer joy in a black dead life.
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