My Mother Never Worked By Bonnie Smith Yackel

546 Words2 Pages

The depression lasted through 1929 to 1939. It was the deepest and longest economic downturn in history. Bonne Smith Yackel, an author, wrote the true story, "My Mother Never Worked," that takes place during these times. Her mother Martha Smith. In 1930 her family reclaimed a 40 acre farm and they traveled 55 miles to it. Her mother worked everyday of her life until death do her part and she did it for her family. The authors choice of vocabulary portrays the central idea of why she did her house work, outdoor work, and recovery work.
Her mother worked all day endlessly providing for her 5 children during the hot summers and cold winters. "My mother plucked each bird, carefully reserving the breast feathers for pillows." It was fall and prairie birds had started appearing and were shot down with the shotgun. The two words carefully reserving are important in this quote because she wants to make pillows out of them for her family so she makes sure she does not lose any. Winter arrived and the family needed warmth. "She sewed night after …show more content…

She would work for hours and then have to add on to her list of things to do. "Every morning and every evening she milked the cows, fed pigs and calves, cared for chickens, picked eggs, cooked meals, washed dishes, scrubbed floors, and tended and loved her children." She did all of this just for her children they meant the world to her. You know this by the repetition words like, "every morning and every evening." The droughts were one of the roughest parts of the great depression days would go by where there was no rain for the land. "My mother and father trudged from the well to chickens, the well to the calf pasture, the well to the barn, and from the well to the garden, and from the well to the garden." The use of repetition is used repeatedly by Smith-Yackel to portray how hard her mother and father worked to be able to sustain their

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