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Financial Struggle In John Steinbeck's Grapes Of Wrath

527 Words3 Pages

Financial struggle is one of the world’s biggest problems today. The present isn’t the only time period the world has had this issue. Financial struggle has been a huge problem since the beginning of time, although the worst time would probably be during the time “Grapes of Wrath” is set in. During the late 1930’s was the “Depression Era” this was when many, many families had been in debt and couldn’t afford many things, including food. In the book “Grapes of Wrath”, the family who the book is focusing on is the Joads. They’re a big family who are also farmers, but not for long when the dust bowl hits their land. Their crops are destroyed and covered in a layer of dust. The family doesn’t have enough money to regrow their crops or buy a new …show more content…

For example, the Joads don’t have enough money to buy food for their whole family or to move to the west coast to start a new life out there. Many families in the book are affected by this issue and look for ways to sustain themselves. Due to the dust bowl, many resources are ruined or completely destroyed and houses are demolished, making lives hard. Farmers seem to have the hardest time since they depend on their crops to make a living. Today, this issue is due to many more reasons than the dust bowl ruining many things. Focusing on America, our population has grown insanely high since the “dirty thirties”. While population has risen, so have prices. The price on many, many products have gone up in the last decade, making people with a lower pay struggle with living. It’s crazy how many people are unemployed in the US right now and with people believing there will be an 80% stock market crash in 2016, things could only get worse. It’s certainly hard for many people to keep a job or life while trying to live off of $7.50 an hour. Another issue with this rise in prices and decline in wages has resulted in 1 out of 3 Americans to be

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He also does a great job of describing how extreme the dust bowl its self was and how it effected people. He also describes the after effects of this large job loss on the people. He talks about a stretch of time from the 1890s to 1940s Thesis: America’s creed of maximization in the form of business farming paired with the drought Was the main cause of the poverty stricken people in the farming industry.

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In the 1930’s, the Dust Bowl caused huge damage to the Great Plains region of the United States. It was an extreme dust storms which swept across the Southern Great Plains area. At the same time, people suffered by a long term drought. The soil was very dry and winds carried off topsoil. Although people tried to stay and live their homeland, many people decided that they cannot do farm work and live their land.

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The book is wonderful source for accurate historical view of the time. During one of Scouts average 2nd grade school day, a fellow student Named Walter Cunningham, Son of a poor farmer being offered money for lunch from his teacher. “Miss Caroline went to her desk and opened her purse. “Here’s a quarter,” she said to walter. “Go and eat down-town today.

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Devastation pervaded the decade of the 1930s, which left many people struggling with hardships. High unemployment and homelessness rate preceded the nation. This destruction became known as the Dust Bowl. During the Dust Bowl, high winds referred to as the black blizzards wreaked havoc on the land. A principal, infamous author, Donald Worster, demonstrates in his book, “Dust Bowl The Southern Plains in the 1930s” the living conditions and obstacles people had faced along with the various explanations for the Dust Bowl.

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The storms took away people’s belongings, their pride, and their sense of protection. The Dust Bowl destroyed the Midwest extremely fast. Not all of it was lost, but the majority of it was. It was a dangerous time for all inhabitants of the Midwest. It caused problems everywhere, not just in the Midwest.

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People who work on farms and own farms have tough times, sometimes crops are not blooming well or the work force is not the best. The Dust Bowl was probably one of the times when farmers had it worst. With the Dust Bowl happening along with the depression farmers could barely keep their crops alive, let alone survive themselves. The Dust Bowl affected farmers because it affected the land.

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The dust bowl was one of the most tragic event that ever happened in united states history it caused a lot of damage to a lot of states and impacted a lot of american lives. The dust bowl caused families to leave homes and families to go hunger on this tragic event. In april 18, 1935 a huge black cloud piled on western horizon which caused a big impact on people´s home. The dust bowl was mainly caused by drought,disappearing of a root system, And the mechanics of farming these are the main sources that caused the dust bowl and Impacted the tragic event towards american lives.

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This day, the worst of the era, is where the Dust Bowl got its name ("The Drought"). The Dust Bowl not only affected the environment, but also caused damage in people’s health. Breathing in the dust made particles get into people’s lungs, which created breathing problems and suffocation until, sometimes, death ("Dust Bowl" 1). While people were dying, so were their crops and belongings. There was nothing else to do other than sit back and watch as farms, possessions, houses, even lives came tearing apart (Jones

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The most beautiful individuals are the ones who went through one of the toughest situations but, yet, came out victorious in a fight that could not be only physically won but mentally. During the Great Depression, there were various factors that played a tremendous role in the devastation on the American people. The Dust Bowl, in 1934, coerced darkness across the Great Plains in America as the rains ceased completely in the earlier 1930s (“Dust”). Soil starved from water sought out for revenge and strangled the life out of the settler’s crops, prosperity, and life as they knew it. To make an already terrible situation even worse, the Great Depression developed and began its toll on the citizens of America when the stock market crashed and farmers

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The Dust Bowl was a time during the Great Depression where there was major drought and extremely heavy dust winds. The Dust Bowl impacted many people and changed their lives forever. It was very hard to survive during the Dust Bowl, and many people didn’t. Unemployment rates increased dramatically due to migration and the dry farms. The Dust Bowl marked a major turning point for the United States, and it tested many people and their ways of life.

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“The Dust Bowl was an epic of human pain and suffering – a crucible of dust, drought and Depression, when normally self-reliant fathers found themselves unable to provide for their families.” (Burns)People’s houses and crops weren’t just hurt, people had pain from the Dust Bowl. The fathers of the household couldn’t even support their families. “Even the most vigilant mothers were unable to stop the dirt that invaded their houses from killing their children by "dust pneumonia.” (Burns)People suffered from a disease called “dust pneumonia,” which was horrible.

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953 Words | 4 Pages

Since the book came out in 1939, everyone has had a opinion on the ending to John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. It has a very controversial ending, that Steinbeck thought would name the last nail into the coffin, so to speak, on how bad the dust bowl and moving west really was. The ending starts when the Joad family is threatened with a flood, so they make their way to a old barn where they find a boy and his old father. The boy says his father is starving, and that he can’t keep anything solid down. He needs something like soup or milk.

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863 Words | 4 Pages

The farmers had to face the challenge of growing new crops, since everyone was starving. Others were struggling to just stay alive and mostly everyone was thirsty. Therefore, the Dust Bowl was a devastating time for many, full of obstacles and

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1123 Words | 5 Pages

The Dust Bowl, beginning in the 1930s, added to the struggle of American farmers as lands out west in states such as Oklahoma and Kansas were over-plowed, causing the topsoil to become uprooted, creating massive dust storms. These dust storms left the land unusable to farm, displacing many Americans in the agricultural industry. Steinbeck’s The Harvest Gypsies displays the struggles these farmers faced when moving west to California, hoping to find some sort of work. Many displaced farmers lived in squatters’ camps, temporary dwellings for those looking for work. Steinbeck described these camps as having awful living conditions, saying that “From a distance it looks like a city dump, and well it may, for the city dumps are the sources for the material of which it is built.”

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Through John Steinbeck's plot in The Grapes of Wrath,  the struggle of the typical American dreamer is depicted in the Joad’s attempt to move to California for a better life. While attempting this dream, the Joad family had to make multiple sacrifices. The first sacrifice occurs early on in their journey, the abandoning of their property (Steinbeck 59). This was extremely difficult for the Joads because they had lived on this land for a long time and they had many memories that had been created there.

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