The Dust Bowl era existed as a time of despair and decay. The Dust Bowl came from a drought that naturally resulted from a numerous amount of poor farming practices, such as destroying grass that let the soil stay in place (“Dust Bowl”). Many dust storms combined with high winds ravaged farmland and even people’s personal belongings and homes (“Dust Bowl”). The Dust Bowl mainly affected the midwest, specifically Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Texas (“Dust Bowl”). More than 350,000 people fled the Great Plains during the 1930s (“Dust Bowl”). A number of different actions and programs help the farmers, such as a water storage bill (“Dust Bowl”). Nevertheless, when a mass amount of people face obstacles in life, they must remain tenacious …show more content…
The large amount of obstacles and struggles throughout the Dust Bowl caused many people to look for something to take them out of the harsh reality. John Steinbeck compares a turtle to the victims of the Dust Bowl in The Grapes of Wrath when he described how “a front wheel struck the edge of the shell, flipped the turtle like a tiddy-wink, spun it like a coin, and rolled it off the highway” (Steinbeck 761). The vehicle that struck the turtle represents many obstacles in the farmers’ lives, such as the dust storms and the black blizzards (“Dust Bowl”). The victims of the Dust Bowl become personified into the shape of a turtle making its way across a busy highway. John Steinbeck also describes that “for a long moment the turtle lay still, and then the neck crept out and the old humorous frowning eyes looked about and then legs and tail came out” (Steinbeck 761). The turtle has dealt with the obstacles in his path, comes out of his shell, and the turtle continues life as normal. The turtle exists as humanity in the sense that nothing will stop them, no matter how massive of a problem the Dust Bowl became. While the literature’s storytelling easily connected with the farmers, they became entranced with the persona of tenacity from Woody Guthrie’s “Dust Bowl Blues” which let them unite
Devastation pervaded the decade of the 1930s, which left many people struggling with hardships. High unemployment and homelessness rate preceded the nation. This destruction became known as the Dust Bowl. During the Dust Bowl, high winds referred to as the black blizzards wreaked havoc on the land. A principal, infamous author, Donald Worster, demonstrates in his book, “Dust Bowl The Southern Plains in the 1930s” the living conditions and obstacles people had faced along with the various explanations for the Dust Bowl.
As long as they can earn money, the farmers will continue in these practices. Worster spends several chapters focusing on the different solutions to the Dust Bowl and how those solutions were utilized only when the farmers were being paid through President Roosevelt’s New Deal. However, once the quality of the land started to improve or it rained the farmers abandoned the practices in favor of more profit. He focuses on the solutions proposed by the conservationists, ecologists, and agronomists.
The poem Of Mice and Men has many symbols that refer to the life of people during the Dust Bowl. The whole poem tells the life of when the men had to handle to get a job and survive. The poem refers to how if you get fired, it is very hard to find another job. It was like this because during the time of the Great Depression, people did not need to have a ton of workers because of the new supplies. Also, there was not much to farm.
One of his arguments parallels the pursuit for capital gain with insouciance to the toll imposed upon the land: “The Dust Bowl of the 1930s was caused not by drought but by the transfer onto the Great Plains of farming methods that were suitable to wetter regions” (Sanders 56). Here, Sanders highlights a great cost of a recklessness most don’t even consider. He shows that often times, people don’t realize how much they’re hurting the land. By bringing up the great Dust Bowl, Sanders reminds his audience of the emotional distraught, the terror, and the destruction wrought by the cost of constantly moving for personal gain. Through this quote, he leaves the thought of plausible disaster that follows their selfish desires.
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.
Luckily Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to shine some light with a new deal. The Dust Bowl was what they called the Great Depression in the drought stricken areas. The condition of the areas around Oklahoma and Texas made living dangerous and futile. “When drought struck
Farmers across the great plains longed for rain. Day after day the weather offered on relief for anyone. The Dust Bowl covered three hundred thousand square miles of territory. It banked against houses and farm buildings snow and buried fences. All of the dirt penetrated into the engines of cars and clogged vital parts.
The Grapes of Wrath: Family Separation The Dust Bowl migration in the United Stated was a historical period of time when families from the midwest would pack up everything they owned and head west to find work in the 1930’s. Along with taking everything they could, families would try to stick together. In John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck demonstrates the inevitable separation between families while migrating to the west. Some readers may argue that Steinbeck’s theme of The Grapes of Wrath was to unify families as they struggle to migrate west, but he mainly displays separation within families as their journey goes on.
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.
In The Harvest Gypsies, Steinbeck also describes decreasing morale in the displaced farmers as he says “the dullness shows in the faces…and in addition there is a sullenness that makes them taciturn.” The difficulty of finding adequate work to support a family during the Dust Bowl was extremely high—and as the work was competitive, these farmers implicated the work ethic that began at the beginning of the 20th
The Dust Bowl is an environmental disaster that hit the Midwest in the 1930s. A combination of a severe water shortage and harsh farming techniques created it. Some scientists believe it was the worst drought in North America in 300 years (History.com staff)
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 Dust Storm Black Sunday” elucidates descriptive importance and affects of the Dust Bowl in the early 20th century. The authors provide some insight into the concept of what is causing the disastrous dust storms, taking a serious approach to the realities of people exposing to the Dust. Families living in the south struggle to survive in a harsh condition; with limited resources and health problems, so much damage was done to the land that drought hit the area and there was nothing anyone could do to stop the disaster. After the drought ended by the 1940s a wide range of migration took place in the south that led people to migrate to California. This information led into deeper understanding and further knowledge about the Dust bowl and
Even though in the stories only two environmental phenomenon occurred, their impact on the citizens are comparable. Despite physical similarities, with citizens all covered in handkerchiefs and dense clouds. All characters were struck with a depression and hopelessness; for they all had to witness the erosion of the surroundings they were familiar with and did not have the power to do anything to fight back. In the story, Letter from the Dust Bowl, Caroline Henderson accurately describes the perspective of those farmers experiencing the Dust Bowl.