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Great Depression Literature Review

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Literature Review
Great Depression and Americans

After the Wall Street Crash in 1929, affected by the direct influences of the stock market and the entangled relations between European countries, Americans were facing a severe economic broke down in their country. People were living a hard time, for instance high unemployment, which led to lack of money, furthermore starvation and illnesses and so on. On the other hand, arts or literature were always the media that people used to express their views, feelings, comments and hope towards issues, therefore, during the Depression, arts and literature ironically "blossomed". This essay reviews two sources, Dancing in the Dark by Morris Dickstein, a book with fruitful examples of how literature …show more content…

Dickstein's research aims to understand the emotions of the people's inner self, their hope for a better life, their desperation of poverty, unemployment and the worthlessness of their money and their expectation to the government and others, which could not be found from simply facts of their way of living or statistics. Therefore, Dickstein focus on the literature illustration of the Depression, how the characters can reflect the writer's political stance and feeling, how characters responded to the situation in the society, at the same time showing the live and feeling of the specific group in the …show more content…

Watkins contains factual materials about the reality of the society of the USA during the Depression period, of the individuals who lived through it, like as Watkins mentioned in the book, "it is the people in whom I find the heart of the depression story." The author divided the book into three sections. The first section is a description from the crash in 1929 towards the eve of the New Deal. Followed by the second section which is about the life of people living in the urban area during the depression and the New Deal. The section is to examine the effect of the New Deal on the citizens, how their lives were changed and their response, such as the labor movements. The final section of the book is the look closer to the rural areas, because during the Depression, not only the economy was defeated but also the rural areas were facing serious destruction in agriculture from dust storm called Dust Bowl and the sharecroppers how they struggle through the difficult times. (Watkins,

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