The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter Five, Starbucks and Ethiopian Coffee Farmers

I hate this chapter. Okay, hate is a strong word. I hate this chapter for reminding me about the hearts that are wrong in this world. Perhaps I'm jumping ahead of myself in blogging about the chapter in numerical order, but I'd like to focus on, "but for your three dollar a day fifteen or twenty families can't eat at all. Nearly a hundred people have to go out and wander on the roads for your three dollars a day. Is that right?" This fills me with rage and pain. I'm reminded of a documentary titled "Black Gold" in which I learned about what corporations like Starbucks do financially to people such as the Ethiopian Coffee farmers. The best coffee in the world, the indigenous peoples' only trade, and Starbucks comes in and forces them to work for less than $0.11 a day. They are starving, cannot build schools, and are resorting to farming drug plants because they turn out much more profit and more frequently than coffee plants. Yet, do our drinks get any cheaper? No, coffee prices are on the rise. How greedy can someone be? Is it right to have an endless supply of money while a parent has fallen ill, is contemplaying suicide, all because they cannot make the $0.11 a day to buy their family bread. Just because we cannot see it doesn't mean it isn't real. It also does not mean that it isn't our problem...this is my beef with big companies that have greedy people at the top that nobody knows how to contact, or even who they are, just like the people controlling the banks in TGOW. The danger here isthat "They breathe profit (not air); they eat the interest on money (not side-meat)."

The word "iron" is in this chapter atleast eight times. It represents a "revolution" which is actually the takeover of manual labor by machienes.

There is a struggle between the warm-hearted and those that are forced to be cold. The lunch of the man driving the tractor is made up of Spam and packaged pie rather than something prepared by his wife or his mother. He does this job because he also has to feed his children.

There are sexual images of the tractor raping the land repeatedly. Steinbeck chose the words carefully and associated them with scientific terms rather than slang to suggest how mindless and thoughtless the actions are...

My favorite quote from this chapter is, "We were born on it, and we got killed on it, died on it. Even if it's no good it's still ours. That's what makes it ours-being born on it, working it, dying on it. That makes ownership, not a paper with numbers on it." I laugh and apply it to my loyalty to the Arkansas Razorbacks football team.