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He done a little bad thing an’ they hurt ’im, caught ’im an’ hurt him so he was mad, an’ the nex’ bad thing he done was mad, an’ they hurt ’im again. An’ purty soon he was mean-mad.
In this quotation from Chapter 8, Ma Joad tells the story of how Pretty Boy Floyd was transformed into someone “mean-mad,” that is, cruel and violent. The inhumane prison conditions that inflict violence on Pretty Boy Floyd for the nonviolent crime of stealing creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. He is labeled bad by society, treated inhumanely, then becomes mean from the treatment he receives. Throughout the novel, we see this same cycle play out through the treatment of the migrant laborers. Those in authority treat them inhumanely, worse than animals, which in turn foments more violence.
I hear there’s three hunderd thousan’ of our people there— an’ livin’ like hogs, ’cause ever’thing in California is owned. They ain’t nothin’ left. An’ them people that owns it is gonna hang on to it if they got ta kill ever’body in the worl’ to do it. An’ they’re scairt, an’ that makes ’em mad.
This quotation comes from Chapter 18, when the man from Pampa describes to Pa, Tom, and Jim Casy the terrible situation he found in California. Here he highlights the man-made cruelty that undergirds the awful conditions migrant laborers face. The reason why so many of those uprooted by the Dust Bowl face poverty in California is not from lack of room or poor quality of land, but because the landowners see the incoming migrants as a threat to their ownership of the land. Instead of responding with compassion, they respond with fear, which leads to violence.
The tractors which throw men out of work, the belt lines which carry loads, the machines which produce, all were increased; and more and more families scampered on the highways, looking for crumbs from the great holdings, lusting after the land beside the roads. The great owners formed associations for protection, and they met to discuss ways to intimidate, to kill, to gas.
In this quotation from Chapter 19, the narrator describes the terrible, cruel system that has led to both the Dust Bowl crisis and the terrible situation for agricultural migrants. Instead of having compassion for those thrown off their lands, the landowners fear that the laborers will take their land. This fear causes them to devote time, energy, and money to worsen the humanitarian crisis by practically criminalizing the migrants’ existence. The contrast in the quotation between the families searching for crumbs and the owners preparing a military-style assault highlights that human cruelty is worsening an already dire situation.
Well, they dropped the price like you said. An’ they was a whole slew a new pickers so…hungry they’d pick for a loaf a bread. Go for a peach, an’ somebody’d get it first. Gonna get the whole crorp picked right off. Fellas runnin’ to a new tree. I seen fights—one fella claims it’s his tree, ’nother fella wants to pick off’n it.
In Chapter 26, Pa explains the peach-picking situation to Tom after the owners break the strike. By creating a situation in which people are starving and desperate for food, the owners can maximize their profits by paying the lowest wages possible. The inhumanity of paying starvation wages in turn creates a violent situation for the pickers where they turn against each other. Just as fear of losing their land makes the landowners more inhumane and violent, so does the artificial scarcity make the laborers more violent toward each other.
