Biographical Essay: Doris During The Dust Bowl

“The more fella’s he can get, less he’s gonna pay. An’ he’ll get a fella with kids if he can,” (The Grapes of Wrath, pg. 128). The dust bowl was a difficult time in American history, and possibly the most difficult for the American family. In the photo, “Mother and Two Children on the Road,” you see a mother and her two children squatting in a car. As stated in the quote employers at this time would often try to get men with children as their workers. I believe this is because men with children would often be more intent on keeping their job and would work for less just to make enough to care for their family. In the photo, I think Dorthea Lange, is showing the woman’s struggle and her love for her children. While the men were off working to

The Dust Bowl was "the darkest moment in the twentieth-century life of the southern plains," (pg. 4) as described by Donald Worster in his book "The Dust Bowl." It was a time of drought, famine, and poverty that existed in the 1930's. It's cause, as Worster presents in a very thorough manner, was a chain of events that was perpetuated by the basic capitalistic society's "need" for expansion and consumption. Considered by some as one of the worst ecological catastrophes in the history of man, Worster argues that the Dust Bowl was created not by nature's work, but by an American culture that was working exactly the way it was planned. In essence, the Dust Bowl was the effect of a society, which deliberately set out to

The Dust Bowl was a difficult time that caused people to lose their lives or to have difficult ones. People got diseases, others lost everything they had, and kids didn’t get to grow up normal. One of these kids was Timothy Johnson. One day, he and his brothers were out when their mom called them in, as she did a loud sound crashed through their trees. They heard the stories of many dust storms forming but Timothy hadn’t known how they would affect his life. They watched as dust clouded around them, they couldn’t even see the tree Timothy and his brothers had played by. Days later after the first storm, Timothy went back to school and talked about it with his friends. A few days later at school another one hit, and all the kids had the realization of what was happening. About 6 months later kids would wear masks and many had gotten illnesses from what was now know as the Dust Bowl. Timothy grew up a lot during the Dust Bowl, he went through many hardships and learned what to do to help out his family. After, he wrote a documentary about it later becoming famous for the perfect way he portrayed it. Yet the story of Tim was only one of many caused by the Dust Bowl, an awful time that destroyed many lives.

According to answers.com, a dust bowl is a region reduced to aridity by drought and dust storms. The best-known dust bowl is doubtless the one that hit the United States between 1933 and 1939.

“We watched as the storm swallowed the light. The sky turned from blue to black, night descended in an instant and the dust was on us…Dust lay two feet deep in ripply waves across the parlor floor, dust blanketed the cookstove, the icebox, the kitchen chairs, everything deep in dust.” -Karen Hesse’s Diary, April, 1935 (Dust Bowl Diary Entries). In the 1930s, a phenomenon called the Dust Bowl swept the people of the Great Plains off their feet. This paper defines the Dust Bowl and its impact on the US economy and American citizens.

The Dust Bowl was a treacherous storm, which occurred in the 1930's, that affected the midwestern people, for example the farmers, and which taught us new technologies and methods of farming. As John Steinbeck wrote in his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west- from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out. Carloads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless - restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do - to lift, to push, to pull, to pick, to cut - anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place

Natural disasters can cause massive damage, but few realize that many barely last a few days. If so much can be done in such a minute amount of time, imagine what a decade would do. The dust bowl was a weather event that lasted for the entirety of an eight-year drought and lingered for multiple years after. The result: Economic devastation for the agriculture of the area. The dust bowl was a large contributor to agriculture’s role in the great depression and defines how we approach environmental protection today.

Fine powder coating people's lips, inhaling dust with every breath you take. That is what it was like during the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. On Thursday. April 18, 1935, a huge, black, billowing cloud piled up on the western horizon. The people in the Southern Great Plains called the the dust storms dusters. It darkened the midday sky and carried off valuable topsoil and made topsoil erosion. Children and the elderly died from breathing in the dust they called it “dust pneumonia.” Cattle such as chickens and cows couldn’t protect and defend themselves from the dust. They ran around in circles until they fell and died from breathing in so much dust. While humans could cover their mouths and eyes with cloth, scarves, and goggles to protect themselves. Some people had even considered that it was the end of the world. Some of the many factors that caused the Dust Bowl to happen were, over plowing the soil and the cows and buffalo over grazing the grass and, the lack of rainfall or drought in the great plains region.

In the detailed story of an impoverished family during the late 1900’s, Jeannette Walls describes her experience from the young age of 3, up until adulthood. The family of 6, with Rex Walls as the father, Rose Mary as the mother, and her three siblings, Lori, Brian and Maureen, were constantly moving throughout the country with little to no food or cash. The memoir shows how dysfunctional the family was, but never seemed to force the reader to condemn the parents. In a life of poverty, the have to move for own to town, and often lived in various mining towns. Although they each found something they learned to love (like Jeannette’s rock collection) in the desert, they had to leave them behind once Rex’s alcoholism only worsened, and they ran

In what was one of the most fertile areas of the United States, one of the Nation’s worst agricultural disasters occurred. No rain came so crops did not grow, leaving the soil exposed to the high winds that hit the area in the 1930s. Stretching over a 150,000 square mile area and encompassing parts of five states—these being Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico—the Dust Bowl was a time where over 100 million acres of topsoil were stripped from fertile fields leaving nothing but barren lands and piles of dust everywhere (Ganzel). While things were done to alleviate the problem, one must question whether or not anyone has learned from this disaster. If not, one must look into the possibility that the United States may be struck

You’re a kid living in the Dust Bowl. “Cough-cough.” You try to force down. Moving your plow back and forth you try to look over the barren wasteland you call home. Wind roaring in your eyes as you see a brown funnel full a dirt and dust less than a mile away. Driving for cover your world fads black. The Dust Bowl was made by a drought and high winds. The drought killed the prairie grass keeping the soil down and the high winds picked it up to make dust storms. The Dust Bowl was harmful to children that affect their education, how they had fun, their health, and spilt families apart.

Have you ever heard of the Dust Bowl? The Dust Bowl took place in the 1920s. The Dust Bowl took place in the Great Plains in the United States. The Great Plains are North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas.

The human brain has been responsible for some of the greatest inventions, movements, and global phenomenons, but not all were positive. With the power of human tenacity comes the even greater capacity for oversight. The American Dream boasted numerous jobs, freedoms, and an expanse of land to enjoy these liberties on. The abundance and fruitfulness in which citizens basked in seemed boundless, but to their horrendous revelation, there was indeed a limit to these resources. After the pivotal stock market crash in 1929, and the onset of the Great Depression, many were left with nothing. The apocalyptic storm of consequence and dust ravaged the land and hope of families across the nation, especially in the West. As the economy and Earth’s surface dried up, and obliviousness faded away, people realized these disasters were caused by humans themselves. The Dust Bowl was a synthetic manipulation of land that resulted from an impetuous proposal from the government, which promised rich land in the west in need of cultivation and thus,

In the book Out of the Dust, written by Karen Hesse, the poem “Finding a Way” represents the struggles Billie Jo and her community went through during the Dust Bowl and how they managed to survive them by not giving up hope. The last four stanzas explain how she warmed up to Louise and her newfound excitement for her to join their family. Billie Jo speaks about the past, present and future so it wraps the story up and places emphasis on the changes seen in the characters. Throughout the beginning of the poem, the author’s reflective tone is displayed through the phrase “The way I see it, hard times aren’t aren’t only about money, or drought or dust” (225) which implies that she is speaking about the past and making conclusions based on her

She remembers graduating Anne Hutchinson Elementary School with a a/line dress that was white lace on the top half and a mint blue/green skirt on the bottom half. She remembers getting picked up at Hommocks Ice Skating Rink at 1:40 to get her new puppy Gracie in Pennsylvanian and the trip being 4 hours long just to get there. She remembers that her family and her picked Gracie out, out of a total of 5-7 other siblings. She remembers falling of a top riser in the auditorium of Anne Hutch and getting 3 enormous bruces all over her legs. She remembers that she used to go up in her tree/play house with a puzzle that had laces on it and other things on it and sitting in there trying to learn how to tie a shoe. She remembers that she learned how