The Women Stood In Their Doors Anonymous

The women stood in the doors looking out at their husbands, who were talking to the landowners. The children gathered behind them, one bare foot on top of the other. They all watched tensely as the negotiation dragged on; their lives hung in the balance. Some of the owners were kind, because they hated what they had to do, and some were angry because they hated to be cruel. But the decision was the same. These families, like their neighbors and friends before them, would be forced to move off the land, to head west to an unknown fate. While this scene from The Grapes of Wrath takes place during the dustbowl drought of 1938 in Oklahoma, the situation is all too familiar to the millions of Americans today who live in poverty. The rich keep getting richer while the poor are getting poorer. The rich unintentionally keep the underprivileged that way by making the road to success a bumpy one, filled with detours. In The Grapes of Wrath, the Joads encounter rich people all along their journey west. Some want to exterminate the Joads; others wish to assist them in their journey to a better life. But the issue both then and now is that the wealth gap is an unjust one. Those of us who are better off must do everything in our power to...