Comparison Of Empathy In The Jungle And The Grapes Of Wrath

Award-winning actress Meryl Streep once claimed that “[t]he great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy.” In sharing this statement, Streep implies that empathy—the ability to understand and feel compassion for others—is one of the most important human traits, for it can bring people together and inspire change. John Steinbeck, author of The Grapes of Wrath and “The Harvest Gypsies,” and Upton Sinclair, author of The Jungle, both are effective in eliciting empathy as they describe the anguish and misery of the lower class, in hopes of encouraging social change. However, Upton Sinclair’s eye-opening novel The Jungle best evokes empathy as he reveals how people tend to empathize with and feel compassion for those who are suffering

In The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck describes a pair of Depression-era children as they rush “immediately to the candy case” inside a diner, staring at the sweets “not with hope or … desire, but with a kind of wonder that such things could be” (51-52). This heartbreaking image of two poor boys staring at candy in awe elicits empathy because it implies that their parents are struggling to provide for them and that they have never eaten candy due to the hardship and poverty they were raised in. Similarly, Steinbeck elicits empathy in “The Harvest Gypsies” as he chronicles the unsanitary living conditions of California migrant workers during the 1930s. One family’s rotting tent is “full of flies … buzzing about the foul clothes of the children” and a baby, “who has not been bathed” for days (41). The image of flies swarming around the tent evokes empathy for the workers, who have to endure the pests on a daily basis, because it suggests disease, poverty, and feelings of disgust and hopelessness. Steinbeck also evokes feelings of compassion through his description of a young boy who “went into convulsions and died” due to a weak diet of “fruit, beans, and little else,” for the boy suffered a premature death, and there was little he could do to change his fate

In doing so, Sinclair reveals how witnessing the misery and suffering of others can lead to compassion and empathy. In the early 1900s, many employees of Chicago’s meatpacking industry were exposed to horrifying working conditions. The “stench” of “hot blood” from the slaughtered livestock “was enough to knock a man over,” and those who “worked on the killing beds would … reek with foulness” (26). According to Sinclair, “there was no such thing as keeping decent,” and during the summer, swarms of flies “would rush [into houses] as if a storm … were driving them,” attracted to the slaughterhouse and nearby dumps (27). The description of a repulsive “stench” so overpowering, it could “knock a man over,” suggests feelings of helplessness and extreme disgust, while the image of hundreds of flies swarming around homes suggests filthiness and inadequate sanitation because flies are often associated with disease and decay (26). These gruesome images appeal to pathos because they cause the reader to feel compassion for the workers, who are forced to endure such horrible working conditions nearly every day. Ultimately, the laborious work takes over the meatpackers’ lives, as “[t]he great packing machine [grinds] on remorselessly, without thinking of [the] green fields” the workers long to see (27). Sinclair