Dangerous Ideas In John Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath

Dangerous Ideas Essay Grapes of Wrath has several “layers” of understanding, but by far the most prominent of these is the idea of organizing unemployed workers. At the time it was so controversial it got the book banned and it was burned, and still today at times comes under fire for a couple of it’s themes.
Early in the story, Casy starts speaking his mind about his ideas with the quote “I got thinking how we was holy when we was one thing, an’ mankin’ was holy when it was one thing. An’ it on’y got unholy when one mis’able little fella got the bit in his teeth an’ run off his own way, kickin’ an’ draggin’ an’ fightin’. Fella like that bust the holiness. But when they’re all workin together, not one fella for another fella, but one fella kind of harnessed to the whole shebang- that’s right, that’s holy.” He talks about people needing to become part of a bigger group, and he describes it as holy. Later on he says "a fella ain’t got a soul of his own, but on’y a piece of a big one." Here starts mentioning the whole idea of one big soul for all of mankind. “Says one time he went out in the wilderness to find his own soul, an’ he foun’ he just got a
Encouraging violence isn’t what he’s going for, but the possibility of it happening when you follow his ideals is strong. The people of the time would have been up in arms against the landowners if they all weren’t blinded by an automatic hatred of it. They also assumed it’s ideas were communistic which was starting to be public enemy #1 in the United States. Even with FDR as the president and so much of a gap in wealth, communism or socialism was widely frowned upon or worse. So of course the book was banned/burned by the anti-communists, wealthy, and a whole lot of others who thought it would cause a major problem for the