Only a third of the one million migrants to California during the Great Depression fled the dust storms in the Midwest, and only half of those were farmers; yet the popular myth of the hungry, poor and dispossessed farmer who only wanted a piece of land to call his own continues to dominate. In this cultural history, Shindo, who teaches history at Louisiana State University, examines the impact of the myth and the reality of Dust Bowl migrants. The four major artists treated here are Dorothea Lange, whose photographs collected in Migrant Mother (1936) symbolized all Depression hopelessness; Woody Guthrie, whose Dust Bowl ballads were informed by his own experiences as an Okie migrant; John Steinbeck, whose novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) generalized human suffering; and John Ford, who adapted that novel to film the next year. …show more content…
According to Shindo, all of these artists had social or political motives: Lange sees the potential desolation of mechanization, particularly agricultural mechanization; Guthrie 's songs present the migrant as an American original resisting
During the 1930’s thousands of Dust Bowl migrant workers made their way from the central plain into California seeking work. In their search for work and some form of income many of the migrants and their families ended up in Hoovervilles, which were makeshift roadside camps that were greatly impoverished. Steinbeck was able to travel through the labor camps and recorded the horrible living conditions of the migrant workers. The collection of these recordings was published as Harvest Gypsies. During the tours of the labor camps he saw the oppression of the workers first hand in addition to workers being demoralized by wealthy land owners.
Eight Months in the Dust Bowl One group of ninth graders was put to the task of surviving one winter, 240 days, in the dust bowl with limited food and water. During this eight months the group of four, two males and two females, had only one cow, one bull, 500 bushels of wheat, and 500 gallons of drinkable water. This group decided that the best way to survive would be that every person would get 2.6 gallons of water to last them 5 days and after that five days pass each person would get an additional 2.6 gallons.
Challenges, we add had this problem trying to get what is blocking your way to sesses or survival. Also with that they need so much determination to do it. With that determination you can do some big things. The articles that are in this essay are Fighting Poverty with Education, Escape from North Korea, And a clip from the documentary The Dust Bowl. In the dust bowl clip people were fighting and was determined to stay alive.
Dust Bowl and Economics of the 1930s The Dust Bowl was a very desperate and troublesome time for America. The southwestern territories were in turmoil due to the arid effect of the drought causing no fertile soils. As the rest of America was being dragged along with the stock market crash and higher prices of wheat and crops since the producing areas couldn't produce. This was a streak of bad luck for the Americans as they were in a deep despair for a quite some time.
The Dust Bowl The Dust Bowl is one of, if not the most disastrous incidents that have occurred over the past century. It took place during the 1930s, in the Great Plains states like Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. The Dust Bowl has affected so many people and land, and will be remembered in history. The Dust Bowl began in 1930. One of the main conditions that caused this catastrophic event was the weather.
Surviving the dust bowl, many people left since the living conditions were so harsh. Some people tried to stay but in the end they had to leave since they lost their land in bank foreclosures. By 1940 about 2.5 million people have moved to the flatland; of those 200,000 moved to California. Landing in California, the migrants were confronted with an existence practically as troublesome as the one they had cleared out. The dust bowl exodus was the largest migration in American history.
The history of migrant farm workers in California has changed extensively over time, especially under the influence of outside factors such as war and the desire to emigrate. Migrant workers, not just farm workers, have been involved in various occupations, from fishing to forestry, yet the agricultural field remains the most common (“Migrant Farm Labor”). Agricultural activities were once performed by Native Americans before Europeans established a colonial presence. During the existence of slavery in the U.S., it is believed by environmental historians that slaves applied their techniques in agriculture to those of American techniques, allowing them to rise against their owners with a better understanding of the landscape of the plantations
The Dust Bowl, beginning in the 1930s, added to the struggle of American farmers as lands out west in states such as Oklahoma and Kansas were over-plowed, causing the topsoil to become uprooted, creating massive dust storms. These dust storms left the land unusable to farm, displacing many Americans in the agricultural industry. Steinbeck’s The Harvest Gypsies displays the struggles these farmers faced when moving west to California, hoping to find some sort of work. Many displaced farmers lived in squatters’ camps, temporary dwellings for those looking for work. Steinbeck described these camps as having awful living conditions, saying that “From a distance it looks like a city dump, and well it may, for the city dumps are the sources for the material of which it is built.”
It’s hard to get through a day during the great depression. Everyday, my family worries about my father's job. Now there's one more thing to add to the pile of worries. The dust bowl. The storms have been going on for about 3 years now.
Banks shut down, people became bankrupt and the number of unemployed reached one-quarter of the workforce. Farmers needed to produce more goods for the same amount of money; which led to a huge seven-year drought. ‘The dirty thirties.’ When thousands of workers migrated to California with a hope of achieving ‘The American Dream.’ Steinbeck was interested in those who strived for a better life and those who had hopes and dreams. George and Lennie have these dreams, the dream to “get a little stake” and to “live off the fatta the lan’”
John Steinbeck: A Literary Light in the Great Depression " The ancient commission of the writer has not changed. He is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of improvement"(“John Ernst Steinbeck”). Said by John Steinbeck as he accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature, this quote illustrates perfectly the goals and ideals Steinbeck held himself to in his writing. Steinbeck pursued above all to give the common folk of the Great Depression a voice; an endeavor that grants him a place with the great writers of America.
John Steinbeck, in the novel, Grapes of Wrath, identifies the hardships and struggle to portray the positive aspects of the human spirit amongst the struggle of the migrant farmers and the devastation of the Dust Bowl. Steinbeck supports his defense by providing the reader with imagery, symbolism and intense biblical allusions. The author’s purpose is to illustrate the migrant farmers in order to fully exploit their positive aspects in the midst of hardships. Steinbeck writes in a passionate tone for an audience that requires further understanding of the situation.
The tone of chapter 11 in John Steinbeck's, “The Grapes of Wrath,” is sympathetic, sad and hopeless. His word choice and syntax show how the sad houses were left to decay in the weather. His use of descriptive words paints a picture in the reader's mind. As each paragraph unfolds, new details come to life and adds to the imagery. While it may seem unimportant, this intercalary chapter shows how the effects of the great depression affected common households.
Thesis:People's actions caused the dust bowl” The dust bowl Hook: It was a long decade. Full of loneliness,dullness and most of all sickness. "Dust Bowl“A severe drought happened and it had caused dry land farming and the plants could not grow.
“With the gales came the dust. Sometimes it was so thick that it completely hid the sun. Visibility ranged from nothing to fifty feet, the former when the eyes were filled with dirt which could not be avoided, even with goggles ”( Richardson 59). The Dust Bowl was a huge dust storm in the 1930s that stretched from western Kansas to New Mexico. People that lived in that area could not step outside or they would get dust in their lungs.