Literature of the Great Depression: A Survey
Literature of the Great Depression: A Survey The Great Depression, beginning in 1929 and continuing throughout the next decade, was a time of extreme economic decline, devastating people of nearly every social class, race, age, and geographic region. Millions of unemployed Americans everywhere suffered the burdens of poverty, homelessness, and crime. While vast numbers of citizens lined up in long bread lines, waiting for hours for the small amount of free food offered by government relief agencies; many others, outraged by their living conditions, took to the streets to protest, sometimes violently, demanding that the government take immediate action to alleviate their suffering. It is these images of such widespread trouble, distress, and social and political upheaval, that sparked the attention of literary writers everywhere. As literary writers assessed these new situations brought on by the Great Depression, one group in particular, the South, piqued the interests of many writers. Economic as well as environmental factors, such as drought and the Dust Bowl, adversely affected the South 's economic dependence on agriculture; forcing many farmers into poverty, and driving thousands from their homes elsewhere in search of better opportunities. It is these immense economic adversities as well as vast human suffering experienced by the South that drew interest from many literary writers, making the South the subject of many famous and important works of literature, and thereby securing for the Southern regions an important historic niche in the history of the Great Depression in America. By examining the literary depictions of Southern life during the Great Depression, of works such as The Grapes of Wrath, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, and Tobacco Road, we gain essential insights into the cultures, lifestyles, and sentiments of those Americans hardest hit by the Great Depression; farmers and sharecroppers in the American south. Among those works of
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