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.

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In which part of this excerpt from the gettysburg address does president abraham lincoln argue that the outcome of the war will depend on the determination and loyalty of northern citizens? four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. we are met on a great battle-field of that war. we have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. it is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. but, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow— this ground. the brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. it is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. it is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us— that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under god, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.