How we cite our quotes: (Page)
Quote #4
"Now I'm tellin' you this, if any of your boys touch that property or hurt Anderson, if you hurt one single fruit tree, a thousand guys'll start out an' every one of 'em 'll have a box of matches. Get it, mister? Take it as a threat if you want to, you touch Anderson's ranch and by Christ we'll burn every f***ing house and barn on every ranch in the Valley!" (103)
Pardon the language on this one (take it up with the ghost of Steinbeck), but as you can see, Mac gets pretty riled up by the visit of the "super" at the orchard. The "super" has just laid down the law with the workers: there will be trumped-up charges, biased judicial figures, hundreds of armed men, and a blacklist for the workers who persist in striking. These threats highlight the extreme imbalance of power between the workers and the owners. It's no surprise that Mac responds with an equal promise of epic destruction for the Valley—though it is chilling.
Quote #5
"When you cut your finger, and streptococci get in the wound, there's a swelling and a soreness. That swelling is the fight your body puts up, the pain is the battle. You can't tell which one is going to win, but the wound is the first battleground...Mac, these little strikes are like the infection. Something has got into the men; a little fever had started and the lymphatic glands are shooting in the reinforcements. I want to see, so I go to the seat of the wound." (113)
Doc Burton tells Mac that he's interested in observing "group-man" during the strikes: he wants to know how the individual person changes when he becomes part of a mob. He likens the striking workers to cells that respond to infections in the body and uses his medical know-how to understand how mob mentality takes hold and works. The problem for Doc? This journey to the "seat of wound" leads him to despair and leaves him vulnerable to the plotting of the opposing mob.
Quote #6
Jim looked without emotion at the ten moaning men on the ground, their faces kicked shapeless. Here a lip was torn away, exposing bloody teeth and gums; one man cried like a child because his arm was bent sharply backward, broken at the elbow. Now that the fury was past, the strikers were sick, poisoned by the flow from their own anger glands. (142)
Though the other strikers have come down from their fury and begin to comprehend the havoc they have wreaked on the faces of the "scabs," Jim stays stone cold. He doesn't seem to participate readily in the normal emotional waves of the picketing mob, which makes him both valuable to the cause and completely creepy. The gore surrounding Jim has no effect on him—it doesn't inspire him to re-consider the tactics of the group or feel concern for fellow workers on the other side of the fence.