By Joshua Breen
When I think about recent events in the past, one of the first ones that comes to mind is the Ukraine War. It has been in the news constantly for the past couple of months, marking it as a significant event in our modern-day history. From what we know about this conflict in recent months, it was sparked over a sudden claim that select parts of Ukraine were actually supposed to be owned by Russia. However, when Ukraine refused to give this land up to Russia, a full-out war broke out. When I think about this part of it, I can make a correlation to The Grapes of Wrath, or more specifically, how the government began reclaiming the homes of these people without their willingness.
In both the Ukraine War and The Grapes of Wrath, we see that people are fighting back against “authority” in an effort not to lose the things they hold dear. In the case of the Ukraine War, in past conflicts with Russia, Ukraine had handed over pieces of their land to them in an effort to avoid conflicts. However, now, with Russia demanding even more land, they have decided to fight back in an effort to safeguard the people and land that they still hold dear. Even though the Joads ended up submitting to the government's wants, we end up hearing in the story about groups of people deciding to stay behind to defend their homes.
Another common factor that is shared between the Ukraine War and The Grapes of Wrath is that we see two different groups of people in conflict with one another have vastly different levels of authority and power. In the example of the Ukraine War, we see the Ukrainians now trying to fight back against a former global superpower that remains one of the most powerful countries to this day. It has even gotten to the point where Ukraine has begun requesting assistance from NATO affiliated countries in an effort to be able to match the combat power that Russia can demonstrate. In The Grapes of Wrath, this power imbalance between forces is even greater. On one side, we have the people being forced out of their land, which mainly consisted of groups like farmers and laborers. Then, on the other hand, we have the banks and the United States government pushing these farmers and laborers out of their homes. From this fact alone, it is very clear that these farmers stand very little chance of victory due to the vast amount of resources that the government could take advantage of to actively oppress these people who have very few means of making a meaningful impact in this conflict.
There is even forced migration that is happening in both the Ukraine War that also took place in The Grapes of Wrath. From this constant conflict between Ukraine and Russia, it is estimated that Russia has now claimed around 18% of Ukraine’s land. This leads to the fact that whoever was inhabiting those lands would have had to migrate out of these lands in order to avoid the fighting that took place there prior to their conquering. Then we also see it in The Grapes of Wrath because of the government confiscating their lands. Therefore, with no right to stay on these lands anymore, these people were forced to migrate to a place where they could reclaim a comfortable life which proved to be quite challenging due to the vast amount of people migrating at once.
Using this information, we can determine that there are quite a few similarities in the events that took place in The Grapes of Wrath and continue to take place in the Ukraine War.
This was inspired by the injustices that were demonstrated at the beginning of The Grapes of Wrath, mainly the banks in the United States reclaiming land from these farmers. I used this power in balance and resilience demonstrated by the common people to compare it to the ongoing Ukraine War, where Ukrainians are playing the role of the underdog in this war against the former superpower Russia. My primary goal in writing this is to show how power and authority can be abused and how the receiving end suffers due to the natural power imbalance that we have in our world.
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