Walker Evan's Bud Fields And His Family

Smith-Yackel’s essay illustrates the grieving process while on a phone call with the Social Security Office to collect potential benefits from her mother's passing. While placed on hold, she reflects the life her mother had lived. During this period of reflection, this is when Smith-Yackel exemplifies the use of imagery within a narrative. She creates vivid images about the hardships her mother once faced. For instance, when her mother and father first got married, they began farming. Farming created a wide variety of new tasks, “She carried water nearly a quarter of a mile from the well to fill her wash boilers in order to do her laundry on a scrub board” (Smith-Yackel 115). Her mother had to not only become physically fit but mentally fit in order to take on the challenges their farm created. Her mother was relentless in making sure her children were well taken care of. In another section of the narrative, imagery is used once again to show the sacrifices her mother made. Smith-Yackel states, “In the winter, she sewed night after night, endlessly, begging cast-off clothing from relatives, ripping apart coats, dresses, blouses, and trousers to remake them to fit her four daughters son” (Smith-Yackel 116). On top of all the other chores their mother did during the day, she also worked through the night to ensure her family’s comfort. Also, another rhetorical strategy within

To begin with, description is utilized to show that pictures are worth more than words. In Lange’s image, the woman looks exhausted and the children seem saddened. Viewers of the image see this by their facial expressions. For instance, two of the children are looking away from the photographer and the woman has no smile on her face. Moreover, onlookers observe how people lived during the Great Depression in the west coast. Viewers of the image see this by their clothing. For example, the woman and children are wearing tattered, dirty clothing. The overall picture represents what people went through during the Great Depression without ever telling the audience it was taken during this

John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men is centred on the lives of ranch workers in the 1930’s and is one of the most interesting and lasting stories of friendship wherein true friendship is the crux of the story. The story is appropriate as it represents what was happening at the time because there was a Wall Street crash which triggered the Great Depression and as a result directly affected the lives of millions of hard working Americans forcing them to lose their jobs, homes, and money. It was a time of great vulnerability and people were forced to make decisions they may not have normally made; the story expands on the concept of vulnerability; as well as the concept of good and bad in people.

In the short story “Marigolds”, the author, Eugenia Collier, uses several key events throughout the short story to represent the unseen cage that the main character, Lizabeth, is trapped in, and ultimately breaks. The story is set in a shanty town, likely taking place during the Great Depression. Throughout the story, Lizabeth goes through a difficult stage in life, a stage in which she is in conflict about whether she wants to be a carefree, innocent child, or an educated, compassionate adult. The climax of the story, when Lizabeth tears and rips up Miss Lottie’s marigolds, is such an emotional moment for Lizabeth that she finally completes her transition to adulthood, understands her endless cycle of poverty, and breaks the final bar of the cage.

To give some context to the story, what is currently happening is the Dad and mom have no real stable way of living income wise which has left them with dirty clothes, no food, and depression. How this theme was introduced here was on page 69 in this quote: “...her face was swollen red ‘It’s not my fault if you’re hungry’ she shouted. ‘Do you think I like living like this? Do you?’”. This has shown how the family is paying for the choices that the parents have made and this continues on in the rest of the story with the family still struggling to live free without any from of constraint. The event results in a vicious cycle of depression as demonstrated in Welch when they had to move because of low income and the kids had to go through neglect or abuse from the mother of Rex and when they moved into a broken down house with no heating to try and fend for themselves for winter. This was due to the parents refusal of jobs and wanting easy money, and judging by the context where the mom’s eyes are “swollen and red” she is crying.

“What those unsuspecting infants could not have realized, of course, was that these were temporary conditions, a false spring to life that would be buffeted by winds of change dangerous and unpredictable, so fierce that they threatened not just America but the very future of the planet.”(p4) Brokaw’s use of imagery here helps the reader understand the drastic nature of the change that occurred in the world between the 1920s and 1940s. He is stating that the youth of our nation was living in a safe-harbor for only a short period of time, almost as if under false pretenses, and that this promising future of America veered radically off a path as they had to face the unprecedented crash of the stock market, with damage so great that over a thousand banks would close, millions of people would become unemployed and homeless, and an overwhelming sense of economic calamity would sweep the feet out from under their fragile vision of security. Brokaw described this in the chapter titled “The Time of their Lives,” as a time when “A mass of homeless and unemployed drifted across the American landscape.” (p7) This gives the reader an image of millions of people hopelessly wandering the country in search for work to survive. The

John Steinbeck’s novel, The Grapes of Wrath, takes place during the Great Depression, a time when troubled and distressed American men and women lived; a time of poverty and an economic crisis. When change is thought upon, it is to be thought of new life and new experiences. The Great Depression is the kind of change that replaces a part of American living with “ Somepin’s happening. I went up an’ I looked, an’ the houses is all empty, an’ the lan’ is empty, an’ this whole country is empty” ( Steinbeck 94). In his work, Steinbeck presents the hardships that Americans had to go through by being mindful of particular aspects which makes the reader understand the characters’ distress. For example, the landscape of the farm lands. Even though the land has its brutality, it grows to be the scenery for humans to be able to recognize and consider their troubles about work and life in general. With these concerns, there are differences between the people who are accustomed to the landscape and admire it, and those who do not agree with it. In the novel, Steinbeck uses attributes of class conflict and injustice as a way of presenting and socially commenting that the Great Depression brought attention to more problems beyond the idea of poverty.

Parker also explains her purpose through the use of stylistic devices like imagery. She uses concrete images to portray the idea of poverty. She explains that “Poverty is staying up all night on cold nights to watch the fire knowing one spark on the newspapers covering the walls means your sleeping child dies in flames.” What adds to the readers idea of poverty is the horrendous image of a child burning to death, also the newspaper-covered wall of a make-shift house. There are plenty other nouns like grits with no oleo, runny noses, and diapers that paint an image of poverty in the reader ́s head. You also have the sense of ́smell ́ through this essay by phrases that describe the “sour milk”, “urine”, and “stench of rotting teeth”. You can also ́feel ́ poverty through hands that are “so cracked and red”, since the author cannot afford vaseline. The use of imagery makes the a!udience more conscious of the effects of poverty. !

Thousands of Americans in today’s society live pay check to pay check, work multiple jobs, and save all the money that is plausible Yet, the essence of poverty continues to grasp members of the population, causing them to struggle to break free from the forceful grip. Although these conditions are experienced by thousands of Americans today, it was no different for the working class of the early nineteenth century. For instance, in The Jungle, where a family of immigrants obtain little money, and experience horrible work and living conditions while in Chicago. Paucity toys with every aspect of the family’s lives, as seen through the literary elements of characterization, symbolism, and conflict. While some may believe

One specific example of true representation is the scenes at the docks where men line up at the fences begging to be chosen to work for one day’s salary. Another scene that accurately shows the Depression Era is the scene of the families in the huge lines for relief money. The lines stretched out the door and down the street and the charities and relief centers would often run out of money before everyone was helped. The viewer feels Braddock’s embarrassment as he waits in line to borrow money from the relief center, and then has to visit

Beginning in the year 1929, America began its plummeting descent into one the worst economic times in the history of our country. By the early 1930’s, up to fifteen million working Americans had been laid off work. Throughout homes all across the nation, dismayed workers had to tell their loved ones in humiliating defeat that they no longer had the means to provide for their families. The raw emotions shown directly in Walker Evans’s depiction of life and people are powerlessness, pridefulness, as well as hopefulness. An example of powerlessness is the lack of shoes shown in the picture.

During the Great Depression, migrant farmers sought out work to stay alive. When they finally found a job to sustain them, workers were mistreated, starved, paid poor wages, and, worst of all, robbed of necessary human companionship. John Steinbeck captures the hopelessness of Depression-era farm life in his novella Of Mice and Men. Throughout the novella, most characters have a disability crippling them and pushing them away from other workers on the farm. Their disabilities are a physical embodiment of their isolation. Steinbeck uses his disabled characters to illustrate the depth of their loneliness, as well as to exemplify different types of loneliness.

In addition, it talks about the condition the families lived in. Moreover, another quote from the article “The Great Depression,” it expresses, “the crisis was far more visible; people, unable to afford groceries or meals.” This clearly expresses that cities were suffering way more than the suburban and rural areas. The rural area had bit more weather problem because of how bad the dust storm, especially the one in 1930, and adding to that how poor they were. There were people hopeless and they couldn’t afford food/groceries for maybe their families and couldn’t afford meals.

Obviously the author has lived through the depression and was black because one could not write something so accurate in accordance to that time period and have one feel the deep emotional impact of her writings without experiencing it personally.  In the first sentence she writes “…all I seem to remember is dust—the brown, crumbly dust of late summer—arid, sterile dust that gets in to the eyes and makes them water, gets into the throat and between the toes of the bare brown feet.”  In this phrase the words give a harsh, cruel feeling of how the depression was, which could then explain how she remembers the depression and that it was a hard time for her.  Most likely it was a significantly hopeless moment in her life.  In the next paragraph she writes “When the memory of those marigolds flashes across my mind, a strange nostalgia comes with it and remains long after the picture has faded.”  Knowing the marigolds symbolize hope the word “nostalgia” gives a feeling of longing, since the denotative meaning is yearning.  When stating the marigolds give a “strange nostalgia” the author could be thinking how she, sometime in her life, longed to have hope.  She needed to have something to look forward to or just something to look at to give her hope.  Later, towards the end of the story she explains “…Innocence involves an unseeing acceptance of things at face value, an ignorance of the area below the surface.”  The words she uses give a sense of wisdom

In John Steinbeck’s tragic, mangled novel, The Grapes of Wrath, the reader is shipped off into the heart of the great Dust Bowl in the American Midwest in the peak of American hardship. Through his use of realism in the era of the modern age, Steinbeck reveals the hardships that were faced by common American citizens during the Great Depression, and utilizes the Joad family in an effort to depict the lives of the farmers who had to flee to new land in the high hopes of a new and better life. The obstacles the family faces are similar to what countless other families had to face, with very little of the population able to successful thrive at the time. By utilizing the empowering endeavors unforeseen by these poor families and the meteorological catastrophes overlooking the Midwest, Steinbeck illustrates the nationwide panic faced by many Americans in an effort to delineate their confusion and uncertainty.