The purpose of using excerpts from Thomas Paine’s
Rights of Man
is to establish an understanding for the original ideology of early American politics. Here the students will examine what Paine considers the past politics of the “old world,” where power is held by a few. I want students to recognize how European governments influenced America’s necessity to create a new, better government.
Students will also be expected identify and compare man’s natural rights vs. civil rights. Natural rights are rights men are born with. Civil rights grow out of natural rights as men become part of a given society.
1
It is important for students to establish how the individual is subject to natural rights and how society creates a necessity for civil rights. This will be pertinent when students begin reading
The Grapes of Wrath.
In
The Grapes of Wrath,
the main focus of the novel is the Joad family. The Joads are evicted from their land and are forced to look for work. They decide as a family that they will travel to West to find work farming.
2
This will be valuable when students begin to evaluate the social injustices that occur to the Joads and other tenant farmers in
The Grapes of Wrath.
Additionally, students will revisit Paine’s
Rights of Man
when they compare his beliefs with those in Chapter 14 of
The Grapes of Wrath,
where Paine is actually mentioned.