Personal Narrative: The Great Depression

Everyone experiences sadness — sadness is a part of life. However, with many people, their sadness can escalate into a feeling of emptiness and a lack of motivation. I have encountered this, and I am still dealing with it today. Few can remember the moment it happened, but I can. For me, my depression started on my 14th birthday. It happened during a sleepover at my house around 12 a.m. I can remember just laying on my couch texting my friend all content and the next thing I know, I just feel this empty sadness take over, it was unlike anything I had felt before. It had taken me awhile but eventually I realized what was happening to me. It started out as just sadness for a few years, then it morphed into this numbing emptiness. I could still

“No one can possibly have lived through the Great Depression without being scarred by it. No amount of experience since the depression can convince someone who has lived through it that the world is safe economically.” was once stated by Isaac Asimov. The Great Depression was one of the horrific and troubling times of American history. Many homes were affected by this tragedy and many families were broken as a result of it. Man had the opportunity to prove himself by both continuing and struggling with his family of leaving them. In Cinderella Man Jim Braddock was the type of man to do anything for his family. His determination and strong will to provide for his family made him excel in his boxing matches. Their true

     The Great Depression was a period, which seemed to go out of control. The crashing of the stock markets left most Canadians unemployed and in debt, prairie farmers suffered immensely with the inability to produce valuable crops, and the Canadian Government and World War II became influential factors in the ending of the Great Depression.

Last I heard from my friends they had grown ears and tails and one seemed to have a fever so I could only wonder if and when something would happen to me. It was already fairly late so I figured it wouldn't do me any good to stay up all night waiting for something when it might not even happen so i drifted off to sleep. When I woke up for school I was still feeling fine aside from the normal morning haze so I figured might as well finish off this week since it was Friday. During lunch just as I sat down by my friends everything started to feel warmer and a headache began to pulse. Of course my body chose now to betray me. I grabbed my head in a desperate attempt to stop the growing pains and everyone around me began to notice my discomfort and tried to help but it just

¨Fortunately, we were able to save our house from foreclosure.¨ Citizens struggled in the 1930’s due to rough times. This event was known as the Great Depression. The Great Depression had a negative effect on the people who fought through the economic fatality. Many individuals had to take on multiple jobs to try to bring in additional money to deal with the grim situation.

Many adolescents, In the Great Depression, received the full affects and suffered. Some were left hungry, impoverished, and hopeless, how are adolescents today compared? The 30’s were a time of great distress for many Americans. Events such as the stock market crash, an economy suffering from being inflated, overuse of credit, a farming crisis, and other events led America to the economic downfall known as the Great Depression. During the great depression, the unemployment was high, the wages were low, lines stretched around the city for food, families that lost their house had to live in makeshift homes in communities called hoovervilles, and children had to stop school to work for money. Teens effected by the Great Depression worked

The 1920s was an amazing time for my country and my family. Normal working people like my family were able to buy cars. We could now see movies, listen to the radio, and listen to the new style of music that we call "jazz". My family was in a great place and we were having fun. But, this didn't last as long as we thought it would. Before we knew it, our economy was collapsing and my parents were struggling to support their 7 kids and our aunt. The Great depression affected my family's and community's life drastically.

I remember coming home on a Monday afternoon and standing in front of the mirror in my room. Mascara and eyeliner were smeared all over my face, and my eyes were puffy. I went over to my dresser and grabbed the small pill bottle laying on top of it. I started off by taking 5. 5 turned into 10; 10 turned into 20; and before I knew it, I had taken 35 pills.

Pain, despair, loss, depression, anxiety. Those are the things that somehow made me as I am today. On October 8th I was born, a happy baby who had no idea the rough road ahead. When I was in second grade my parents got divorced. I was close to my mom so when she moved away I was lost in a whole new way. My dad had always had some anger issues but when they split it was a little more frequent. I had to move schools the next year and it was weird because I didn’t know anything about public school. I remember one day a girl walked up to me and asked if I wore mascara and I didn’t even know what that was. I didn’t know how to make friends, so I decided to be friends with the first person I met. That was a big mistake because she was just

I have learned quite some lessons since I was eight years of age. See, I grew up with immense depression, anxiety, insomnia, and minor schizophrenia. Of course, I never knew that because I always thought it was something every child went through, the twist; however, I did not have "Imaginary friends", all-though everyone described those voices as them, they were demons to me. These "demons" patronized me days in and days out. Due to these "demons" I never got to sleep which resulted in hallucinations. These hallucinations concluded with me flailing around thinking I was about to get killed or hit by an oncoming car when there was no car in either direction of me.

Franklin Roosevelt once said, “True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.” There was a lot of ideals that went into making the New Deal how it was. One ideal that played a factor was that fact that people that were affected by the Great Depression feared they were honestly going to starve to death due to different factors that contributed to The Great Depression. Another ideal was the fact that there was inequality in the 1920s and most people could not participate in the economic boom. Workers wages were way too low. The last main ideal that went into the The Deal was the fact that there was a lack of purchasing power. The Great Depression was an awful time and it was hard for the President to try and meet everyone’s needs.

     Families coped with unemployment in different ways. Some families had a little money saved and would use it to pay the

The 1920’s was a very prosperous period for many Americans. Food production increased 64 percent, worker productivity increased by 40 percent, electricity sales doubled, fuel consumption more than doubled, and pay was increased for many industrial workers (Davidson, 2008). With the soaring economy and new items hitting the shelves all the time, American consumers were living the high life. Even if you wanted something and did not have the money you could simply get it on credit and pay for it later. After all, the economy was showing signs of immense economic prosperity with productivity at an all time high what could go wrong. Construction soared with the building of new skyscrapers, suburbs, and road construction.

The United States of America has the largest public debt in the world. Over forty eight million people live in poverty within the United States. We are nineteen point five trillion dollars in debt, according U.S. federal government. Jobs are at an all time low, minimum wage for an average adult is not enough to support a family on. This is true for even some people without a family as well, making life necessities themselves seem impossible to cover. So, we must ask ourselves, is the American dream really an impossible one?

They always say that depression is something that’s all in your head. It’s something made up, something fabricated by your own selfish internal world. You don’t realize when it hits you or how it hits you. One day you just realize you no longer know how to feel; you’ve become numb. Growing up I was happy. I lived a happy life. I had a bed of my own and a roof over my head. I was surrounded by friends and family who loved me. I was content for as long as I can remember.