Camelia Elias session 9

1. Camelia Eliassession 9 American Studies

2. The Great Depression • Speculations in the 1920s caused many people to buy stocks with borrowed money. They then used these stocks as collateral for buying more stocks. • Stock market outraces real economic growth • stock market becomes unsteady • Broker's loans went from under $5 million in mid 1928 to $850 million in September of 1929 • The problem of buying stock “on margin” • When investors lost confidence and pulled out, the stock market collapsed • Republicans responsible for the economy

3. The Great Depression • "Any lack of confidence in the economic future or the basic strength of business in the United States is foolish.“ - President Herbert Hoover • More than 3.2 million people are unemployed • December 1931 • New York's Bank of the United States collapses. • April 1932 • More than 750,000 New Yorkers are reported to be dependent upon city relief

4. The Dust Bowl • eight years of dust blew on the southern plains. • it came in a yellowish-brown haze from the South and in rolling walls of black from the North. • breathing, eating a meal, taking a walk were difficult • children wore dust masks to and from school • women hung wet sheets over windows in a futile attempt to stop the dirt • farmers were helpless as their crops blew away

5. The Dust Bowl • The Dust Bowl of the 1930s lasted about a decade, impacting much of the Southern plains • The Dust Bowl lengthened the effects of the Depression • it caused the worst drought in American history, destroying crops and forcing farmers off their lands in search of other work • it covered more than 75 percent of the country and affected 27 states severely

6. The Dust Bowl

7. Results of the Dust Bowl: Plowing Abandoned Homes

8. Another Abandoned House

9. forced migration • families were forced to abandon their homes and find work elsewhere • mass migration to California • people had to load everything they owned into their truck, or car, and leave • they were forced to sell the rest of their possessions and only take what they could

10. Forced Migration

11. Forced Migration • The people forced to leave their land are referred to as "Oakies." • They left in droves; most traveled along Route 66 to California

12. Time Magazine, Monday, Apr. 17, 1939 “On California's highways during the last few years a tourist sometimes encounters a mysterious and appalling sight—thousands of jalopies, driven by hungry-faced men, bulging with ragged children, dirty bedding, blackened pots & pans. Hated, terrorized, necessary, they are migrant workers who harvest the orchards and vineyards, the cotton and vegetable fields of the richest valleys on earth.”

13. Time Magazine Monday, Apr. 17, 1939 “Their homes are filthy squatters' camps on the side roads, beside the rivers and irrigation ditches. Their occupational diseases are rickets, pellagra, dysentery, typhoid, pneumonia, starvation, sullen hatred exploding periodically in bloody strikes. Old American stock, they are mostly refugee sharecroppers from the Dust Bowl of the Southwest and Midwest. They are called the "Oakies." There are 250,000 of them—a leading U. S. social problem, and participants in one of the grimmest migrations of history.”

14. migrant camps • when the Oakies arrived in California, there were so many of them that they were forced to live in “Hoovervilles.” • there was little food, no work, and the living conditions were very poor.

15. migrant camps

16. Migrant Camps

17. Little or No Work • the Oakies found little or no work once they arrived in California • they were often forced to accept jobs for extremely low pay just to survive • the American ‘Californian’ dream turned into an American nightmare

18. Pickers being driven to work, to earn 0.75 a day

19. John Steinbeck • 1902-1968 • Worked as a laborer before he gained success as a novelist • Grapes of Wrath considered his best • Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962

20. Nobel Prize winner • The winner was to have made the greatest contribution to literature, leading it in an ideal direction • Awarded for a body of work, not a single novel or play • Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962 “for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception” • The Grapes of Wrath earned Steinbeck a Pulitzer Prize in 1940

21. John Steinbeck's Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech • "Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it and it has not changed except to become more needed. The skalds, the bards, the writers are not separate and exclusive. From the beginning, their functions, their duties, their responsibilities have been decreed by our species...the writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit - for gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally flags of hope and of emulation. I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature."

22. Steinbeck’s Speech • “I think it would be well to consider the high duties and the responsibilities of the makers of literature. • Literature was not promulgated by a pale and emasculated critical priesthood singing their litanies in empty churches – nor is it a game for the cloistered elect, the tinhorn mendicants of low calorie despair.”

23. Steinbeck’s Speech • “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.”

24. Steinbeck’s themes and settings • wrote about the downtrodden man • most often from or concerning the Salinas Valley region of California, which is Steinbeck's home. • the depression age and the devastating consequences of the drought have been the subject of several novels.

25. The Grapes of Wrath: beginnings • Steinbeck arrived at migrant camps in California in the 1930s. • what he witnessed inspired him to write one of his most famous novels • one of the most celebrated epics of all times.

26. universal considerations • the economic system makes everyone a victim – rich and poor, privileged and disenfranchised. • all are caught “in something larger than themselves.” • it is this larger monster that has created the divides between the victims

27. Impact of the Novel • The Grapes of Wrath brought to light the exploitation of these migrants and gave the issue nationwide attention. • Some people were so angered at the realistic portrayal the novel gives, they burned copies of it. • Steinbeck was accused of harboring communist sympathies and exaggerating the conditions of the migrant camps. • all of this, however, drew the attention of Eleanor Roosevelt, which ultimately led to congressional hearings and changes in labor laws.

28. Steinbeck’s reaction to the reception of the novel • “The vilification of me out here from the large landowners and bankers is pretty bad. The latest is a rumor started by them that the Okies hate me and have threatened to kill me for lying about them. I'm frightened at the rolling might of this damned thing, It is completely out of hand – I mean a kind of hysteria about the book is growing that is not healthy.”

29. Woody Guthrie • The Ballad of Tom Joad • American masters

30. Aspects of the Novel • characterization • narrator / POV • plot / structure / theme • setting • context • a moral tale • American attitudes

31. Characterization • the hero not an individual type but a collective force – ONE big soul • the Joads models of moral virtue • Tom: a straight-talking man . . . he owns up to his past without indulging in regret or shame. • deeply thoughtful disposition, truthful speech, and gestures of generosity endear him to the reader • The Grapes of Wrath, film clip

32. Narrator / POV / style • narrator: anonymous, all-knowing, sympathetic • shifting POV  mixed voices in dialogue  collective thought • preaching, sermonizing, grand rhetoric • man against man • “It ain't that big. The whole United States ain't that big. It ain't that big. It ain't big enough. There ain't room enough for you an' me, for your kind an' my kind, for rich and poor together all in one country, for thieves and honest men. For hunger and fat.” (Chp. 12)

33. plot / structure / theme • individualism vs. collectivity • calculated greed, responsible for much of the characters’ sorrow • selfishness separates people from one another • disabling unity and brotherhood • Jim Casy emerges as the novel’s moral mouthpiece • companionship • togetherness and cooperation should always take precedence over practicality

34. setting as theme • highway 66 • migration camps • harsh weather, simple misfortune • a golden life in California, like the season’s wine, has gone sour • the rotting vines and spoiled vintage in particular, both a source and an emblem of the workers’ rage, become a central image and provide the novel with its title • Book of Revelation (Rev. 14:19), “The angel swung his sickle on the earth, gathered its grapes and threw them into the great winepress of the God’s wrath.”

35. context • The Great Depression • The Dust Bowl • Communism vs. liberalism • against social Darwinism • against laissez faire – let it happen  classic liberalism

36. a moral tale • people can no longer afford to stratify themselves according to gender, age, or other superficial differences • people find their greatest strength in numbers

37. American Attitudes • Steinbeck was against materialism • supported the working man against the bourgeoisie • paradox: as conservative as the bourgeoisie

38. The Grapes of Wrath, doc • Reflections on John Steinbeck and the Grapes of Wrath (documentary)