APEngLangper711-12

After the narrator is hospitalized and given a form of electroshock therapy, he emerges desensitized but imbued with a sense of racial pride, the superficiality of his previous experience having been erased.

To these men, any money spent on employees—whether in terms of wages, benefits, or sanitary and safe working conditions—meant less money for their own pockets. The connection between healthy, happy workers and high levels of productivity was not obvious in the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era.

the ten young men are ordered to get into the ring to entertain their white audience by fighting each other, blindfolded

Hickock is extroverted, resourceful, and “manly.” “Dick’s literalness,” the reader is told, “his pragmatic approach to every subject,

was the primary reason Perry had been attracted to him, for it made Dick seem, compared to himself, so authentically tough, invulnerable, ‘totally masculine.’”

Farm prices dropped to record lows and bitter farmers tried to ward off foreclosers with pitchforks. By the dawn of the next decade, 4,340,000 Americans were out of work. More than eight million were on the street a year later. Laid-off workers agitated for drastic government remedies. More than 32,000 other businesses went bankrupt and at least 5,000 banks failed. Wretched men, including veterans, looked for work, hawked apples on sidewalks, dined in soup kitchens, passed the time in shantytowns dubbed "Hoovervilles," and some moved between them in railroad boxcars. It was a desperate time for families, starvation stalked the land, and a great drought ruined numerous farms, forcing mass migration.

When Eric Schlosser came out with Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal in 2001, it was hailed as a modern-day Jungle, and with good reason.

Schlosser did far more, connecting the rise and consolidation of the fast-food industry in America to the declining power of labor unions, sliding blue-collar wages and growing income inequality.

"The basic thinking behind fast food has become the operating system of today's retail economy

Difficulties during adolescence. Studies have found abused and neglected children to be at least 25 percent more likely to experience problems such as delinquency, teen pregnancy, low academic achievement, drug use, and mental health problems (Kelley, Thornberry, & Smith, 1997). Other studies suggest that abused or neglected children are more likely to engage in sexual risk-taking as they reach adolescence, thereby increasing their chances of contracting a sexually transmitted disease (Johnson, Rew, & Sternglanz, 2006). Juvenile delinquency and adult criminality. According to a National Institute of Justice study, abused and neglected children were 11 times more likely to be arrested for criminal behavior as a juvenile, 2.7 times more likely to be arrested for violent and criminal behavior as an adult, and 3.1 times more likely to be arrested for one of many forms of violent crime (juvenile or adult) (English, Widom, & Brandford, 2004). Alcohol and other drug abuse. Research consistently reflects an increased likelihood that abused and neglected children will smoke cigarettes, abuse alcohol, or take illicit drugs during their lifetime (Dube et al., 2001). According to a report from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, as many as two-thirds of people in drug treatment programs reported being abused as children (Swan, 1998). Abusive behavior. Abusive parents often have experienced abuse during their own childhoods. It is estimated approximately one-third of abused and neglected children will eventually victimize their own children (Prevent Child Abuse New York, 2003).

These include costs associated with juvenile and adult criminal activity, mental illness, substance abuse, and domestic violence.

"Smith, in his confusion, jealousy, anger, disappointment - and spite - reactively and instinctively thrust that hunting knife into Herbert Clutter's throat (Smith may also simultaneously have been displacing his anger onto the victim, thereby symbolically killing his feckless paramour).

The narrator eventually takes a job with the Brotherhood, a political organization that supposedly helps the socially oppressed. To take the job, he is forced to change his name, leave Mary, and make a complete break from his past. He complies.

Certainly, he paints the oppressive economic system in bleak colors. Many critics note, however, that Steinbeck was basically a reformer, not a revolutionary. He wanted to change the attitudes and behaviors of people — both migrants and economic barons — not overturn the private enterprise system.