'Woody Guthrie In Dust Bowl Refugee'
Woody Guthrie was a complicated man. When one compares his legend to the man himself, it is immediately obvious that there were stark contrasts between the Woody Guthrie depicted in his songs, and Woody Guthrie of real life. On one hand, he was a man of the people, fighting for the rights of the poor and destitute. On the other, he was selfish, irresponsible, and in some cases objectively detestable. Woody Guthrie isn’t an anomaly in this regard. Many great artists and musicians weren’t people many would want to spend time around. Jackson Pollock was a wife-beater (Usborne, 2007), Jack Kerouac was a miserable alcoholic, and Charlie Parker was a heroin addict, absentee husband and father. When asked about Bird, Miles Davis said, “If I said something about Bird, you wouldn't believe it… He was a big hog. A pig. No such thing as no with him… I suppose geniuses are like that”(Cook, …show more content…
He, “Takes on the persona of the refugee, putting himself right in the middle of the dust storm or highway” (University of Virginia, 2009). The majority of the song is written in the first person, differing from the classic folk ballad. This serves the purpose of making the song more personal. It is often easier to feel empathy when a voice or a face is attached to it rather than a people at large. However, in doing so Guthrie beautifully depicts the hardships of an entire people, and he is clear in his point that his experience isn’t uncommon. He routinely switches back and forth between “I” and “We” throughout the song. Guthrie highlights the suffering that comes with displacement, but in doing so shows the solidarity and community that comes along with it. “Dust Bowl Refugee” serves two purposes, it brings attention to hardships that were most likely neither fully understood, nor appreciated by those who were unaffected. Simultaneously, it serves to unite a
Analysis Of The Dust Bowl Diary By Ann Marie Low
921 Words | 4 PagesThe Dust Bowl Diary by Ann Marie Low is an incredible piece of documentation about the struggles and hardships that were faced during the infamous Dust Bowl. In this diary, Low dives deep into many different subjects of struggle and change, and it is truly fascinating. In today's society, people take everything for granted. The survivors and witnesses of these horrible years are people that everyone should look up to as an example. In our world, eating the same food, or sleeping in an uncomfortable way is unbearable, but those problems were the least of the concerns of these people.
Dust Bowl Dbq Essay
832 Words | 4 PagesThe Dust Bowl was a terrible experience during a horrible time. In the 1930s post World War I America had a total collapse of the stock market causing the Great Depression affecting the economy on a global scale, but hitting hardest at home in the United States. However, the economy wasn’t the only thing that was hit hard during this time; seemingly unstoppable dust storms ravaged farming land from the west to east coast hitting hardest in the great plains in the middle section the the US became known as the Dust Bowl. The Dust Bowl was not entirely a causation of bad luck on nature, it was caused by an increasing demand for crops, advancements in farming technology, while the final nail in the coffin was a lack of rain. During World War
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880 Words | 4 PagesDust Bowl By: Keegan Smith Have you ever been in the Dust Bowl well I have and here is my journey as me and my family try to survive it.
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404 Words | 2 PagesEight 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.
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463 Words | 2 PagesThe Dust Bowl by Kevin Burns, is a documentary on what the narrator describes as, “the worst man-made disaster in history” or the severe dust storms that took place in the South in the 1930’s. Burns crafts a non-biased account of the Dust Bowl by providing the viewer with firsthand accounts from people who lived through the Dust Bowl, readings of letters sent during the storms, and in-depth explanations of the events from historians. The documentary begins by showing life in the South before the Dust Bowl and explaining the factors that led to the Dust Bowl. The first description of life before the Dust Bowl follows the life of young woman, Caroline Boa Henderson, who moved to the South to follow her dream of owning her own land.
Dust Bowl Blues Poem
162 Words | 1 PagesOn paragraph 11, in “Letter from the Dust Bowl,” Mrs. Caroline A. Henderson writes to a friend that the dust storms have destroyed their barley, buried mulberry hedges that protected their shelters from north west winds, wiped out pastures, and turned their locust grove into fence posts. Despite these conditions, why did Mrs. Caroline A. Henderson and her husband decide to stay, while the rest of their fellow settlers left? The song “I’d Rather Not Be in Relief” opens with these lines: “We go around all dressed in rags While the rest of the world goes neat,”
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323 Words | 2 PagesThe Dust Bowl was both natural and human disaster, which some of it provoked by human activities. In the 1920’s the weather was favorable with plentiful of rain and technology such as tractors. This helped Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico, and Colorado’s great plains. Yet, farmers gave little consideration of the prairie grass that secured the topsoil. The topsoil was a great source for crops to grow.
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1170 Words | 5 PagesDust storms in the Dust Bowl area wreaked havoc on the Great Plains and Southwestern United States and caused the death of many. Once upon a time (The 1930’s to be exact), there was a bright young fellow named Bob. His family consisted of six people: Bob, June (his sister), Billy (his one year-old brother who was very sick), his older brother (Eric), Bob’s dad, and Bob’s mom. They lived in a rural area of Oklahoma. In the “Dirty Thirties,” their lives changed drastically.
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715 Words | 3 PagesEver heard of the Dust Bowl? “The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms that really damaged the agriculture of the US and during the 1930s. The Dust Bowl was a severe drought that has started to ruin the agriculture. When this happened the states including Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico were affected.” ( John Steinbeck ).
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1576 Words | 7 PagesThe Dust Bowl, a series of severe dust storms in the the 1930’s, left the the southern plains of the United States as a wasteland. The storms occurred due to the lack of use of dryland farming techniques to prevent wind erosion. Powerful winds would pick up loose soil and carry it around the country side. Called “black blizzard” or “black rollers”, these storms had the potential to black out the sky completely. Due to the inability to grow and sell crops, banks evicted families and foreclosed their properties, leaving them homeless and without an income.
Essay On The Dust Bowl
1291 Words | 6 Pages“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.
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1183 Words | 5 PagesAnother reality Cooke expresses, being “born by the river in a little tent” (Stanza 1) because he was one of the less fortunate people who was not allowed in a public hospital, born into an unjust circumstance. Back in the time era he lived in black mothers weren’t always treated “equally” and had the “opportunity” to use public hospitals for child birth. These are some of the “travails of adversity” Americans have to deal with that almost diminish their hope for a richer, fuller life. Cooke then changes the tone of the song towards the ending into a more hopeful tone. In his verses, “there was times that I thought I couldn’t last for long but now I think I’m able
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