A Summer Tragedy Short Story

The dust bowl was a tragic time in America for so many families and John Steinbeck does a great job at getting up-close and personal with one family to show these tragedies. In the novel, “The Grapes of Wrath”, John Steinbeck employed a variety of rhetorical devices, such as asyndeton, personification and simile, in order to persuade his readers to enact positive change from the turmoil of the Great Depression. Throughout the novel, Steinbeck tells the fictional narrative of Tom Joad and his family, while exploring social issues and the hardships of families who had to endure the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. Steinbeck’s purpose was to challenge readers to look at

The plot, or basic storyline, of this short story is about a black woman, Annie Johnson, based in the United States before 1905. Her marriage had collapsed due to her husband leaving her to pursue religion in Oklahoma and leaving her with very little money. The plotline develops on to show her struggle to support herself and her two sons and how she has to use courage to support herself and her family.

Like the American population during Great Depression, the characters in the story faced many hardships they had to overcome, including but not limited to those mentioned previously. In brief, the Great Depression was a devastating event in the history of America’s economy and Capitalistic standpoint, that had the potential to abolish the United States’ world power status

In California during the Great Depression, Lennie Small and George Milton are two ranch workers going from job to job with the dream of saving enough money to purchase their own land to “live on the fatta the land”. As events unfold in the novel, George, Lennie, and other characters such as Candy and crooks reveal how their own hopes and

In the short story, “Marigolds,” Eugenia Collier tells the story of a young African-American girl, Lizabeth, as she transitions from adolescence to womanhood in Maryland during the Great Depression. Throughout the story, Lizabeth and Miss Lottie, a very poor old woman, experience hope in similar ways. Lizabeth describes her neighbor, “Now at the end of that life [Miss Lottie] had nothing except a falling-down hut, a wrecked body, and John Burke, the mindless son of her passion. Whatever verve there was left in her, whatever was of love and beauty and joy that had not been squeezed out by life, had been there in the marigolds she had so tenderly cared for” (638). This quotation best exemplifies the main point Collier makes in the story.

In The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck effectively uses the rhetorical strategy of pathos to illuminate the dehumanization of migrant workers during the Great Depression. His story revolves around the Joad family, as they travel from Oklahoma to California in search of work. Steinbeck appeals to the reader’s empathy

Throughout the course of Coming of Age in Mississippi, readers observe as Anne Moody undergoes a rigorous transformation – the period of adolescence proves to be years of growth and exposure for Moody. As a child, she is aware of the difference in treatment between whites and blacks – however, she is oblivious to the reason why. It is not until Emmett Till’s murder that Moody really becomes aware of what is happening in the world around her. Prior to August of 1955, Moody had been so consumed with school, work and family that she didn’t pay very much attention to race relations. It’s a point of awakening when she finally grasps the hatred that whites in Mississippi have for blacks – she now begins to understand why her family had lived through such inhumane conditions. As Moody begins to understand the concept of race and equality, she thus realizes which side of the spectrum black people are placed on. On the other hand, Moody’s mama Toosweet, has long endured the brutal callousness of Chattel Slavery -- as a result she holds a different perspective than Moody. Their differing viewpoints often lead to tension between the two characters; this essay will examine and compare the psychological effects of Chattel Slavery on Moody and her mother.

The 1920s were a time of social injustices, primarily revolving around racial discrimination. With the revival of the Ku Klux Klan only a few short years before, African Americans lived in fear of lynching and other forms of racism during this period. This form of social injustice was widespread and known by all in the United States, but there was another issue during this time that was not as well known. The West Virginia mine wars had begun in 1920 due to the injustices that the miners had faced for decades. Miniscule wages and dangerous work conditions were only a few of the hardships that the miners had to face. The author of the book Kettle Bottom, Diane Gilliam Fisher, was able to capture these hardships perfectly in her poetry to help shine light on the terrible treatment and the resulting consequences that the miners and their families received during this time. Many of her poems, such as, “Dear Diary,” “Pearlie Tells What Happened at School,” and “Walter and His Mama Talk about Angels,” show the negative impact that growing up during this period of violence and injustice had had on the miners’ children.

The Grapes of Wrath, written by John Steinbeck, is considered by many to be the hallmark of American literature. It covers the journey of the Joad family as they stick together through one of the harshest eras in American history, the Great Depression. The structure of the Joad’s narrative is interspersed by smaller, highly descriptive interchapters, which sets the novel apart from other classics in its ability to make the reader understand and relate to the Joads and everything they went through. The detailed, impactful vignettes foreshadow problems the Joads have to overcome and the overview descriptions in the vignettes contrast with the specificities of the Joad’s story. They contain Biblical allusions, colorful descriptions, and objects that can interact with the main characters later in the narrative. Through the use of imagery and diction, the vignettes make Steinbeck’s message more impactful and meaningful.

John Steinbeck’s novel, The Grapes of Wrath, takes place during the Great Depression, a time when troubled and distressed American men and women lived; a time of poverty and an economic crisis. When change is thought upon, it is to be thought of new life and new experiences. The Great Depression is the kind of change that replaces a part of American living with “ Somepin’s happening. I went up an’ I looked, an’ the houses is all empty, an’ the lan’ is empty, an’ this whole country is empty” ( Steinbeck 94). In his work, Steinbeck presents the hardships that Americans had to go through by being mindful of particular aspects which makes the reader understand the characters’ distress. For example, the landscape of the farm lands. Even though the land has its brutality, it grows to be the scenery for humans to be able to recognize and consider their troubles about work and life in general. With these concerns, there are differences between the people who are accustomed to the landscape and admire it, and those who do not agree with it. In the novel, Steinbeck uses attributes of class conflict and injustice as a way of presenting and socially commenting that the Great Depression brought attention to more problems beyond the idea of poverty.

Robert and Bessie Brown, who are the paternal grandparents of the author’s wife, made their home in Bradley, South Dakota, a farming community and rail hub on the eastern Dakota prairie. Bessie grew up on a farm near Bradley, whereas Robert, subsequent to service in the Great War, arrived in Bradley as a young adult seeking a livelihood by acquiring the community’s Ford dealership. After becoming husband and wife, they remained in the small town where the civic-minded couple took on leadership roles in their church and numerous service organizations. Foremost in Robert and Bessie’s lives were their four children: Mary, Robert, Eldred, and Verna. They nurtured their children through the challenging times of the Great Depression and, as they matured into adulthood, guided them through the turbulent years of World War II.

One might say that the Great Depression was a time of despair and feeling vulnerable from those who lived through it. However, writings have shown that some Americans during this era did not give up and had an optimistic view as opposed to a pessimistic view. In “Anacostia Flats” by John Dos Passos, it shows that the ex- service men during the Great Depression had a sense of determination for getting their bonus. The film 42nd Street demonstrated the tenacious spirit of Americans who worked on a play during The Great Depression. Meridel Le Seur’s “Women in the Breadlines” depicted the reality of struggling without employment but having the will to keep trying. During these times, society had not surrendered as several of them stood up for

Born in 1897, William Faulkner was born into a traditional southern family in Mississippi. Throughout his career, Faulkner chronicled the effects of the Great Depression in the postbellum South with his short stories and novels. Following an era of excess and luxury, the Great Depression revolutionized the life of Americans living in the southern states. The economic turmoil brought on by the recession increased existing racial tensions and heightened the disparity between the upper and middle classes. Although it takes place approximately forty-five years prior, allusions to the Great Depression can be seen throughout William Faulkner’s short story “Barn Burning” in the racial and social clashes between Abner and the surrounding community, along with the lifestyle of the Snopes family.

In John Steinbeck’s tragic, mangled novel, The Grapes of Wrath, the reader is shipped off into the heart of the great Dust Bowl in the American Midwest in the peak of American hardship. Through his use of realism in the era of the modern age, Steinbeck reveals the hardships that were faced by common American citizens during the Great Depression, and utilizes the Joad family in an effort to depict the lives of the farmers who had to flee to new land in the high hopes of a new and better life. The obstacles the family faces are similar to what countless other families had to face, with very little of the population able to successful thrive at the time. By utilizing the empowering endeavors unforeseen by these poor families and the meteorological catastrophes overlooking the Midwest, Steinbeck illustrates the nationwide panic faced by many Americans in an effort to delineate their confusion and uncertainty.

In “That Evening Sun,” William Faulkner uses only thousands of words to recreate the old, cruel doctrine of racial discrimination in the South America. The whole story is told by a young boy, and it analyses the miserable life of a poor black woman, Nancy, from a naïve child’s perspective. The words in the story are simple but straightforward. Faulkner makes this story strange but unique by leaving no special relationship between the young narrator and the black woman, so the narrator is pushing the entire story with his truest descriptions and most direct portrays. This objective way of narration highlights the black woman’s tragic fate that is brought by the unfair society. Under the child’s simple narration, there are darkness and misery lying under the mask.