Obstacles In The Dust Bowl

The Dust Bowl era existed as a time of despair and decay. The Dust Bowl came from a drought that naturally resulted from a numerous amount of poor farming practices, such as destroying grass that let the soil stay in place (“Dust Bowl”). Many dust storms combined with high winds ravaged farmland and even people’s personal belongings and homes (“Dust Bowl”). The Dust Bowl mainly affected the midwest, specifically Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Texas (“Dust Bowl”). More than 350,000 people fled the Great Plains during the 1930s (“Dust Bowl”). A number of different actions and programs help the farmers, such as a water storage bill (“Dust Bowl”). Nevertheless, when a mass amount of people face obstacles in life, they must remain tenacious

The large amount of obstacles and struggles throughout the Dust Bowl caused many people to look for something to take them out of the harsh reality. John Steinbeck compares a turtle to the victims of the Dust Bowl in The Grapes of Wrath when he described how “a front wheel struck the edge of the shell, flipped the turtle like a tiddy-wink, spun it like a coin, and rolled it off the highway” (Steinbeck 761). The vehicle that struck the turtle represents many obstacles in the farmers’ lives, such as the dust storms and the black blizzards (“Dust Bowl”). The victims of the Dust Bowl become personified into the shape of a turtle making its way across a busy highway. John Steinbeck also describes that “for a long moment the turtle lay still, and then the neck crept out and the old humorous frowning eyes looked about and then legs and tail came out” (Steinbeck 761). The turtle has dealt with the obstacles in his path, comes out of his shell, and the turtle continues life as normal. The turtle exists as humanity in the sense that nothing will stop them, no matter how massive of a problem the Dust Bowl became. While the literature’s storytelling easily connected with the farmers, they became entranced with the persona of tenacity from Woody Guthrie’s “Dust Bowl Blues” which let them unite