Harvest Gypsies And Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech Analysis

Improved Essays
Would you stick up for someone being harassed for their wealth, religious view, or political view? In the text “The Harvest Gypsies” and “Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech” the authors explain what it’s like to have all those things done to you. For that reason, bystanders are guilty if they don’t help a situation because they have the power to change it for the better.
In the text “The Harvest Gypsies” bystanders watched as poor families struggled to get by and did nothing to help. For example, as the author states “She could not have fed it at the breast; her own diet will not produce milk” (Steinbeck). This quote shows how badly they had it and how easy it would’ve been to offer help to the less fortunate families even though the bystanders

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Can you imagine yourself living in a time where you can’t consider anywhere your home? Well during the time of The Great Depression that 's what people 's lives were like. It was a time of scarce food and few jobs to offer to struggling families. But because many families were struggling to make a living they had to move a lot. These types of people were called migrants.…

    • 1308 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Homelessness has been an issue for Americans since the foundation of our country. Although the issues faced by those without a home have changed, many characteristics have remained constant over the years. For example, shantytowns have played a large role in American homelessness from the Dust Bowl to modern day. John Steinbeck’s groundbreaking novel The Grapes of Wrath shows the life of migrant workers in the 1930’s.…

    • 1019 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Harvest follows three of the 400,000 plus children that work in the American fields. Each one of these children were introduced to the migrant lifestyle at a very young age. Some do not even remember how young they were when they started in the fields, like 12 year old Zulema. It was passed down to these children like their parents had it passed down to them and so on. It’s a perpetual cycle of generations, partly because it is all they know and also due to the values instilled in them.…

    • 1039 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim” (Wiesel). A true statement made by Elie Wiesel, one of the survivors of the holocaust, he decided to tell the world what happened, he decided not to become a bystander because silence can never help the victim. The consequences of silence can be seen everywhere but in the fictional story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and the non-fictional story the “Ruling in the Scottsboro Trial” by Judge James E. Horton we can clearly see how silence made a huge difference in someone else’s life and in Elie Wiesel's nobel prize acceptance speech we can appreciate how silence can make you guilty. We can not be innocent if we are bystanders, we have to speak for those who stay silent, it is our…

    • 621 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Harvest Gypsies is a collection of articles written by John Steinbeck in 1936 about the migrant workers and the lifestyle they lived. Steinbeck starts off the book discussing the migrant workers, originating in California, and how they differ from the ‘old kind of laborers,’ immigrants. They come around when crops such as, peaches, grapes, apples, and lettuce, come into harvest and they move to wherever work is needed. “The migrants are needed, and they are hated” (Steinbeck, pg.20). They came across to outsiders as ignorant and dirty and a threat to the crops if they refused to work.…

    • 1186 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Governments are created by the people to protect their rights. When a government is corrupted and fails to do its job, the people rally against it because it has strayed from its purpose. Many different people have different viewpoints on their government. An excerpt of “Civil Disobedience” shows Henry David Thoreau’s ideal government, and how his current government went against the ideals he believed in. In Chapter Seventeen of “The Grapes of Wrath”, John Steinbeck explains how the camps of the migrant families create a union and a government, even for one night.…

    • 1190 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Main Events - Parvanna was burrying her father when a man saw her. The man kept Parvanna to live with him and his family. Since she had no where to go she stayed with them. One night one of the man's daughter told her to escape because her dad and is friends were planning to sell her to the Talibans. She escaped from the shelter of the man and started her journey which is to search for her family.…

    • 717 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Argument Essay In the article “Charity means you don’t pick and choose” by Patricia O’hara, the author shows a contrast between the giving and the poor. The article explains how a little boy and his mother were stopped by a “homeless person” and how he asked for his “doggie bag” if the little boy wasn’t going to eat his left over food. The mother reacts by grasping her sons’ hand, which gives an impression that she feels vulnerable around a homeless person. This is contrasted when another group of people walked past and made an remark “It’d be better if they got a job,” which shows that second group of people have no respect for the homeless and judge them straight away.…

    • 925 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Martin Luther King Jr. once said “In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends”. In the texts “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and Elie Wiesel's acceptance speech, they both have bystanders that do not help out when it came to harming humans. People just stand around watching others get hurt and that's why no one believes in good people, that leads me to say bystanders are not innocent. In “The Lottery” people gather around every year to watch or join in on stoning people to death which is why none of them are innocent.…

    • 401 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    A Manifesto of the Civically Just by Evangeline Booth From a very young age, I felt not only compelled by my inner self, but also encouraged by the initiative displayed by my mother and father to stand strongly behind the causes I knew in my heart to be just. However, from years of focusing my efforts on accomplishing this, I slowly came to the realization that it was no longer sufficient to merely stand behind my passive, yet well-intentioned words. One is now required to take willful action to change a situation in favor of the morally correct.…

    • 2254 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Elie Wiesel, a writer and Holocaust survivor says during his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” This idea states that the act of keeping quiet and not questioning an immoral authority only gives power to the oppressors. By speaking up for what is right, the power is given to the people to repair an unjust government.…

    • 971 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” This commonly used saying, from Acts 20:35, is displayed numerous times in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Generosity is defined as “the act of being kind and generous.” Although each time generosity is displayed the motive behind the gesture is slightly different, each time someone wanted to bless another.…

    • 644 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    This paper will be exploring five peer reviewed journals about the Bystander Effect. What is the Bystander Effect? It’s how the presence of others inhibits helping (Kassin, Fein, Markus, & Brehm, 2008). When a group of people are around and someone is hurt, it’s unlikely that the person who is hurt will get the help they need because the group is large enough that everyone will think someone else will call for help. The articles in this paper range from how bystanders will react to rape scenarios, how bystander’s reactions to sexual harassment will influence how they would punish the one who did it, bullying and bystanders, and how Darley and Latane’s Five Steps to Helping was developed.…

    • 1539 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In 1964, the murder of a young woman named Catherine Genovese caught the public 's attention only after two weeks of its occurrence, resulting in a national term known as the 'Bystander Effect. '. This term basically implies that, while other bystanders are present, one 's sense of responsibility is dwindled, despite watching a victim in danger, and the individual is therefore less inclined to act alone. While, on the optimistic side of this controversy, some people ignore the urge to witness over act, many innocent people like Catherine continue to suffer and die due to the inherited and technological apathy of the twenty-first century. The objective of this paper is to educate would-be bystanders and raise awareness about the 'Bystander…

    • 1271 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Psychology Reflection

    • 1267 Words
    • 6 Pages

    They came to the conclusion that humans in social situations often look for other people to step in and help those in need. This is so that they themselves don’t have to be the first person to step up and provide aid. Using this concept, I have been able to better understand my own choices in social situations and that I can’t fall into these sorts of traps in everyday life. For example, when I was in high school or in other social settings, I witnessed various kids being bullied. During these situations, there were many bystanders.…

    • 1267 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays