The Great Depression The Great Depression is the lowest “trough” throughout the history of industrialized world. It lasted from 1929 to 1939. The primary contributor to the Great Depression is the reckless speculation in the stock market. This reckless speculation leads to the bankruptcies of many Americans. The Great Depression indirectly inspired a very famous song--The Ghost of Tom Joad. In this essay, I am going to analyze this song by finding out its background and by supporting its contents with actual evidence. To begin, the background of The Ghost of Tom Joad is pretty complicated. It was released in the year of 1995. It seems to have nothing to do with the Great Depression which is taken place from 1929 to 1939. However, the author, …show more content…
I am going to list three places from the song and support them with evidence. “Men walking’ ‘long the railroad tracks, Goin’ someplace there’s no goin’ back”(Springsteen line 1-2) These two lines give the readers an understanding of the intense atmosphere in the Great Depression, and they also described the men despairly working for the government along the railroad. Even though people have the jobs provided by government, they can hardly afford their families. According to th the statistics, average wage for each weeks fall from $50 to $22 during the Great Depression. “Got a one-way ticket to the promised land, You got a hole in your belly and gun in your hand”(Springsteen line 17-18) These lines describe how people choose to kill themselves in order to release from the pressure of how to survive. Everything is despair in the Great Depression. The New Deal carried out by President Roosevelt didn’t have a dramatic change. The suicide rate reached 22 people out of 100,000 people during the great depression. “Wherever there’s somebody fightin’ for a place to stand, Or decent job or a helpin’ hand”(Springsteen line 29-30) These two lines are parts of the speech of Tom Joad. From his mouth, we know that people have to fight for jobs and shelters. They need to turn against their friends, peers, or even family in order to survive. Nearly a quarter of the workforce was out of work. In other words, a quarter of Americans don’t have
The charge about the old days of the American economy—the nineteenth century, the “Gilded Age,” the era of the “robber barons”—was that it was always beset by a cycle of boom and bust. Whatever nice runs of expansion and opportunity that did come, they always seemed to be coupled with a pretty cataclysmic depression right around the corner. Boom and bust, boom and bust—this was the necessary pattern of the American economy in its primitive state. In the US, in the modern era, all this was smoothed out.
One of the quotes from the book that will always be in my mind is “the most significant fact about the Depression era may well be that it was the only time in the twentieth century during which there was a major break in the modern trends towards social disintegration and egoism.” This era made a lot of people including the rich and middle class realize just was being poor felt like. This quote shows that the Great Depression did not discriminate against a specific
The Great Depression was a catastrophic period of economic hardship that lasted from 1929 to 1939. It was caused by many primary and underlying factors that led to a downfall in economic activity and widespread unemployment. Some of the major causes of this event were stock market speculation, overproduction in numerous industries, underconsumption by consumers, high levels of debt, and the fateful crash of 1929. All of these factors combined created a severe economic emergency that resulted in extreme levels of unemployment and poverty for many Americans.
In 1929, the stock market crashed, bringing economic devastation to all of America, and much of Europe. Many Americans were jobless and homeless, causing many problems all throughout America. The American citizens and people frantically tried to create coping methods fro life in poverty, and did what they had to survive, as our government was working to improve life for the American citizen. These fateful years would later be known as, “The Great Depression”, the greatest economic crisis in American History.
The Great Depression The Great Depression is one of the most well-known and longest economic downturn in history. Depositors, investors, producers, financial institutions, industries, and agriculturists all suffered giant losses during this time period. The Great Depression took place in the United States from 1929 to 1939. Before the Great Depression (1923-1929) the U.S. economy was flourishing at a great rate.
“We ain’t got no houses,” (Line 6) … “They ought to turn around and take a good look at the morning after – babies’ heads everywhere, poppin’ up through the holes in the tents” (Lines 21-23). Coal miners endured a rough existence, and many joined unions in
The Great Depression was a period of economic hardship in the United States from 1929 to 1939. During this period, the economy experienced a sharp decline, resulting in widespread unemployment, poverty, and a drop in the standard of living for millions of Americans. The causes of the Great Depression are complex and varied, but some of the most commonly cited include the stock market crash of 1929, a lack of consumer spending, and a decrease in investment from businesses. The Great Depression had a significant impact on the American people.
Impact of the Great Depression The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, written by Amity Shlaes, gives a lengthy detail of the Great Depression. According to her viewpoint the government handled the situation of the economic crisis very poorly, which led to the Great Depression lasting longer than it suppose to. In this book, Shlaes wrote about observed action taken by Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt. She gave a detail of the years from 1927 to 1940 and in the beginning of every chapter she mentioned the unemployment rate and the average of Dew Jones Industry.
In 1929, the U.S. was hit with the worst economic crisis in the history of the country, the Great Depression. The Great Depression left millions of people unemployed and cost millions their life's savings. The Depression lasted for ten long years for the American people. Since the Great Depression ended, people have studied it, trying to figure out what happened that started it all. The problem was, in fact, the poor economic habits of the people at the time, such as speculation, income maldistribution, and overproduction.
On one of the most devastating days in economic history, the stock market crashed with the value of the dollar being useless. Many families were left without any warning, losing any of their savings placed in stocks. People started to worry, rushing to the banks to withdraw quickly whatever money they had left to make sure they didn 't lose anything else. Banks were closing faster than people could get to them, leaving people with nothing. The people who did grasp their money spent less on items that they needed because prices skyrocketed, which in return got people getting laid off from their jobs, worsening the economy and losing even more money.
In the first music video of Bruce Springsteen’s, The Ghost of Tom Joad, viewers are presented with pictures of the depression. The video starts off with a small introduction about the Great Depression and the Joad family. Once the introduction ends, the voice of Bruce Springsteen is heard. His voice has a country sound to it, allowing the listeners to show more sympathy for what people went through during the Great Depression.
“I’ve been very mindful that things can change quickly, without warning...” (McCabe 14). Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird was greatly influenced by The Great Depression. There are many major historical connections to book, including the Jim Crow laws, mob mentality and the Scottsboro trials.
By doing this, Springsteen establishes credibility by making sure the listener can understand that this song is a tragedy and his life was doomed from
Want to know about the Great Depression? Now I will tell you about it. It was a bad time in the Untied States. This movie mirrors the 20’s till even now, life was good on the surface but the great depression was rumbling underneath.
Loss of work was an obvious struggle during the Great Depression and no doubt one the ‘Forgotten Man’ faced but the piece goes beyond surface. Man lost sense of community, motivation, and hope. The Depression may have caused citizens and the government to pull together in desperate need of support and comradery but that did not happen overnight. This piece shows a man, who is clearly not a hobo as he is dressed well and clean, being overlooked or as Dixon put it, forgotten. The frightful level of uncertainty the generation faced is unimaginable but they needed to remember they were not alone.