In Chapter 22 members of the camp learn that the police are sending people to their dance to start a fight so that the police can come into the camp. Tom's employer gives them insight to the plans to cause a disruption. "There's going to be a fight in the camp Saturday night. And there's going to be deputies ready to go in... I'll tell you why... Those folks in the camps are getting used to being treated like humans. When they go back to the squatters' camps they'll be hard to handle (404).
The police in California are very corrupt. They are extremely biased against the 'Okies' and the rest of the migrants and they do not want them in their towns any more than the rest of the population. The attitude of the people in California is easily summed up by the attitude of the police; they only want the migrants when they need them to work, and they don't want them in their towns other than that because they view them as dirty, and also because they know they are dangerous. When the migrants are treated like people, they begin to want that treatment from everyone, and they will demand more and more. If they revolt, there are more of them and they have the strength of adversity on their side, and the police know that they would be a difficult enemy. They use trickery to try and get into the camps because they want to bring down the spirits of the migrants so they understand that they don't belong and so that they don't try to start a revolution.
I wonder if the Joads will face any more adversity from police. They already had trouble in Hooverville, and now they have had issues in the government camp. Tom is already angry, so another encounter could turn out to be quite bad. Will they face any more issues from the police, and if they do, will the Joads be able to control themselves and not resort to violence?
Since the migrants are treated so poorly, it's almost as if it's a ticking time bomb to when they will start to band together for a revolution and use violence. The way they're treated is exactly, or lesser than, how an animal is treated, making them have to live like animals. The only problem that the police and well-off people face with this system is that these migrants are actually people, even if they try to make it like they aren't. The migrants have the capacity to think and do just as any other human being, making it impossible for them to not revolt. The Joads will probably eventually take action against what's happening to them because they understand that the wages and living conditions they're in are unfair and cruel. Also, how else would they be able to get their point across so that there's change?
ReplyDeleteThe migrants are definitely treated like less than animals. Nobody in their right mind would walk into a pack of starving dogs and beat one up for it crying for food. But like you said, they think like any other person, and they know their treatment isn't fair, but the time bomb isn't really when they will band together and revolt, it's when one of those revolts gets traction. As we've seen now, there have been many attempts at some sort of revolution, and some very large ones at that. It seems like with the amount of migrants coming in, and the amount unsatisfied with their conditions, eventually there will be so many groups banding together that the police won't be able to break them all up. But of course, that is going to be difficult to get started when the police arrest, beat up, blacklist, or kill anyone who could be considered a 'red'.
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