"He done a little bad thing an' they hurt 'im, caught 'im an' hurt him so he was mad, an' the nex' bad thing he done was mad, an' they hurt 'im again. An' purty soon he was mean-mad. They shot at him like a varmint, an' he shot back, an' then they run him like a coyote, an' him a-snappin' an' a-snarlin', mean as a lobo. And he was mad. He wasn't no boy or no man no more, he was jus' a walkin' chunk a mean-mad" (76).
The repetition that occurs in Ma's description of Purty Boy Floyd emphasizes and over exaggerates the effects of violence and prison to a person. Being surrounded by others who have gotten negative effects in coming out of prison, Ma worries for the sanity of Tommy Joad. A witness to Floyd's changing character, she learns that violence is not the way to prevent another person from doing something terrible again. The words, "bad thing", "hurt 'im", "mad", "mean", and "mean-mad" all have negative connotations, indicating that once someone does something dreadful, punishing that person will only lead that person into turning into the vicious person they were viewed as. She highlights that after always being beaten by others who wanted to make sure that Floyd did not do a "bad thing" again, Floyd became "mad", and it drove him insane. The next time he did something bad, he was automatically hurt, turning him "mean-mad", not only insane, but also hostile. His family ended up just "[shooting]" him, and with everything that was done to him, he became the person that his family initially thought he is. Ma is also asserting that Floyd's parents left him no room for mistakes and naiveness, not considering that the "bad [things]" he had done could have been out of unawareness. Thus, Ma maintains that prison and violence changes a person with morals, to a crazy and immoral person, due to the environment that they are surrounded in.
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