Analysis Of The Dust Bowl In Timothy Egan's Novel 'The Worst Hard Time'

The Dust Bowl was arguably one of the hardest times in American history. This event mostly took place in the Midwest region in the 1930s. Indeed, the Dust Bowl was a frightening time period for most people, as described in Timothy Egan’s novel The Worst Hard Time, “ Did you see the color of that monster? Black as the inside of a dog.” Based on this description, one can interpret that this phenomenon was greater than the average sandstorm. The impact of the Dust Bowl forced many people to make difficult decisions about everyday life necessities. Egan’s novel revolves around the lives of families that stayed and endured the hardships that the Dust Bowl brought along. Although sharing different stories and backgrounds, the families faced the same

With all the dust constantly in the air, people found it hard to perform normal tasks. Overall, life was complicated in terms of moving from one place to another. One person who witnessed these events was Earl F. Smith. According to his interview, Smith explains how sometimes the dust made it difficult to even see the sun. “ The wind would be blowing so hard that you could hardly see—like being in a blizzard. It would stack up against a farmer’s fence to the point where I’ve seen four wire fences completely covered with dirt.” Smith puts into prospective as to how much dust was blowing around. To Smith, this made daily activities difficult to follow. Transitioning into another source, Woody Guthrie writes about difficulties Dust Bowl migrants went through in his song “ So Long, Its Been Good To Know Yuh. “The churches was jammed, and the churches was packed,/An’ that dusty old dust storm blowed so black./Preacher could not read a word of his text.” As people went to church for salvation, the dust blew everywhere in the room. This provides an experience that the Dust Bowl not only made life difficult, it also made it terrifying. Not having visibility put migrants in a bad position to move forward. Because living conditions were tough for the migrants, it will affect their travel experience as

These hardships were presented in the form of discrimination. Many migrants were given the name Okie as a negative term. Two people who suffered from discrimination for being a Dust Bowl migrant were Mildred Lenora Morris Ward and James Harrison Ward. For the most part, only Mrs. Ward acknowledges being an Okie. She describes that she the term Okie was derogative, that they were viewed as dumb ignorant people. Mrs. Ward’s son was a prime example of Okies being discriminated against, “In fact, when our son started school here he came home several times and told me the kids had called him a dumb Okie because he was born there and didn’t even know what an Okie was.” One can get a sense as to how hostile the environment was towards migrants to a certain extent where they felt unwelcomed. As a result, Mrs. Ward worked harder to prove the local people wrong. Migrants were also discriminated in the workforce in terms of employment. A photograph claimed by John E. Allen, Inc. in the 1930s shows that discrimination is made clear to migrant workers. A banner says “JOBLESS ME KEEP GOING WE CAN’T TAKE CARE OF OURSELVES- CHAMBER OF COMMERECE.” The migrant workers are shown walking by the poster with their head nodding down. Since the chamber of commerce supports the poster, discrimination is most likely not going away soon. This shows how the locals were really