The Worst Hard Times are a historical- fiction story about five different families that had survived the Dust Bowl. The book was written by Timothy Egan. He was the journalists from New York Times. He tells or interview families that had survived the Great Depression and The Dust Bowl. The Worst Hard Times was taken place in the 1930s during the time Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt was president. During the 1930s farmers had trouble with the droughts, rainfall, and the big black blizzard. However The Dust Bowl had really caused farmers living in Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas to really lose a lot than what they had before. The Worst Hard Times contains five families that survived the disaster in the 1930s. The first family that had …show more content…
“She was also raised on No Man’s Land and worked as a young woman as a teacher at a small rural schoolhouse near Boise City, Oklahoma.” (www.ibrarian.net n.d.) Another reason of why the school was broken, and couldn’t pay the teachers like they was supposed to be because the farmers did not pay their taxes, which led the school to go bankrupt, and not getting the support that the school needed to function correctly. So since the school had offered her the teaching job, she gladly accepted the …show more content…
Why because at first the writer began to start off with describing about the first family who was the White’s Family. They were the family that had lost one of their horses while they were living in their hometown Las Amina, Colorado. Since they had lost one horse at that time Bam White had no choice, but to move his family from Las Amina, Colorado to Littlefled, Texas. Then after the writer got done writing about the White Family; he went on to write about the flashback in the story in which it had caught me off guard of why would the writer start with a family then goes off into a flashback. However, when I read the book some more the flashback had started to make sense just a little throughout most part of the story. I had read most of the “The Worst Hard Times” reading pages that was assigned to me. I took notes basic on what the character was deaccessioning about, the time period they were in, the flashback, and what was my point of view of the chapters as a whole in most parts. I made a book summary basic on my basic background information about what had happened in the story of “The Worst Hard Time. Of how the families had when through the worst disaster in America. I gave an oral book report telling my assistant instructor about what I had through about the book. For me, I really did not like this book at all, because I couldn’t visualize myself on one of the families’ shoes of living in the
Parts three and four made me sad because they detail the revolt and its aftermath. Many people died during this brief period, which were only a few of the tragic consequences brought about through the institution of slavery. Nat Turner is a tragic figure in this and he should be remembered as a victim at the hands of persecutors and oppressors. I do recommend this book.
However, many readers may not enjoy Steinbeck’s use of intercalary chapters. This could be because they do not like the transition from the Dust Bowl information to the storyline of the Joad’s family. In addition, they could also feel like the intercalary chapter take the focus away from the Joad’s family and feel the background information they provide is unnecessary. To conclude, the novel The Grapes of Wrath has intercalary chapters that serve as a literary device designed to show the general social and economic elements of America during the Dust
Hard Times’ ‘The Dirty 30s’ ‘The Great Depression’ (Ganzel n. pag.)This quote describes so much about 1930’s especially farming. Farming was hard because there was a really bad drought. Was out they rain no crops could grow. And the crops can't hold the soil together and not blow away. Which was really bad for the soil to blow away. Also the farmers didn't know that the equipment they were using would tear up the soil too much and it would blow away. The farming in the 1930s was bad because of the dust bowl and the price of everything was low.
The “Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s”, was written by Donald Worster, who admits wanted to write the book for selfish reasons, so that he would have a reason o visit the Southern Plains again. In the book he discusses the events of the “dirty thirties” in the Dust Bowl region and how it affected other areas in America. “Dust Bowl” was a term coined by a journalist and used to describe the area that was in the southern planes in the states of Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas, between the years of 1931 and 1939. This area experienced massive dust storms, which left dust covering everything in its wake. These dust storms were so severe at times that it made it so that the visibility in the area was so low to where people
After beginning her teaching job there, she was shocked by the ignorance of the locals. As a young lady, she was not supposed to be intelligent, but her father had taught her well. She was utterly appalled at the lack of educational exposure in Kentucky. She wrote in a letter to her sister, Emily, that:
First, Egan believes that the Chicago Syndicate, as well as the government, took part in causing the Dust Bowl. The Worst Hard Time began with an explanation of how the land was inhabited after the Comanche were kicked off. Texas wanted an extravagant state capitol building after the Civil War. In order to fund this building, Texas agreed to give land to whoever would take on the endeavor of building the structure. The Chicago Syndicate decided
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 to live. Like ants scurrying for work, for food, and most of all for land." The early thirties opened with prosperity and growth. At the time the Midwest was full of agricultural growth. The Panhandle of the Oklahoma and Texas region was marked contrast to the long soup lines of the Eastern United States.
(Worster12) but neglects the fact that at the time of the Dust Bowl many of the farmers weren’t fully educated in preventing most of the natural disasters that occurred. The drought has caused a lot of unfavorable conditions for farmers in the southwest. In Worster’s book he says “Few of us want to live in the region now”. There is too much wind, dirt, flatness, space, barbed wire, drought, uncertainty, hard work.”
The area of severe wind erosion, soon known as the Dust Bowl, compromised a section of the wheat belt near the intersection of Kansas, Colorado, and Oklahoma and Texas panhandles. ”(Gregory, 11). Along with Gregory, John Steinbeck in his book, The Harvest Gypsies, and Debra Weber in her book, Dark Sweat, White Gold, also write about these events, and in particular the people who were affected by it. The Dust Bowl had ruined any chance of farmers in those regions being able to farm, because of that they were forced to relocate to be able to survive.
One of Miss Moore's defining qualities is her intelligence. Her academic skills and self-presentation is noticeable through her college degree and use of “proper speech” (Bambara, 385). Miss Moore also makes her intelligence evident from the methods she uses to teach Sylvia and the other children. Unlike planting them in classrooms, she takes them out on trips to show them the real world. Despite all the insults she receives from th...
...families during the great recession because it follows families who had jobs and supported their families, and then lost those jobs because of a major roadblock. This set back influenced how well of caretakers they could be to their children, and how well their children will succeed in life. As each family goes through their own individual problems they had fleeting faith in the “American Dream”, stopped believing in meritocracy, and parents and children were affected by the loss of income. American Winter may have type casted those types of families struggling with the recession to pull at heartstrings, only focused on the failures of each family, and left some answered questions. Nevertheless, their message was clearly brought to the surface: the days of American being a land of equal opportunity are long behind us, and it may be awhile before those days return.
While Bessie was young, and her older brothers and sisters started to work in the fields, Bessie took on some new responsibilities. She would now look after her sisters, and sometimes even help her mother in the garden. Bessie started school when she was six years old and walked four miles to school everyday. In school, she was very intelligent and excelled at math. Then, in 1901, when Bessie was nine, her life changed dramatically, her father George Coleman left his family. It was said that he was tired of the racial barriers that existed, and so he returned to Oklahoma (Indian Territory as it was called then) to search for better opportunities. When he was unable to convince his family to come with him, he left Susan and his family. Shortly thereafter, her older brothers also moved out, leaving Susan with four girls under the age of nine. This caused Susan to have to get a job, which she found very soon. She became a housekeeper for Mr. and Mrs. Jones, who allowed Susan to still live at home, and they would also give her food and other handed-down clothing. Since her mother was now at work, Bessie took on the responsibility of acting as a mother and a housekeeper. Every year at the cotton harvest, Bessie’s routine was changed because she now had to go out into the field and pick cotton for her family to be able to survive. This continued on until Bessie was twelve, and this was when she was accepted into the Missionary Baptist Church, where she completed all of her eight grades.
Her mother Gladys, worked very hard for her children. Gladys was from African American slaves and Cherokee Native Americans ancestors. Patricia was blessed with a brother and once he was born her mother began to budget for the future. She saved her money from her jobs as a housewife and a domestic worker, to help pay for her children’s education. To pay for Pat’s medical schooling, Gladys scrubbed floors. “Mom and dad were the fuel and engine to my empowerment, she once said.” (source 9 page 99) Her parents helped her work toward what she has achieved today. She...
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 take all it could from the earth while giving next to nothing back.
Throughout the book, I’ve also learned about many racist things. It was painful to read about the hateful treatment of Blacks during that time and the effect that it had on Black children. When Maya had a bad tooth and her grandmother took her to a white dentist in town. The white dentist refused to help Maya because, as he stated, "I would rather put my hand in the mouth of a dog than to put it into a nigger's mouth." This incident serves only as an example of the many ways that Blacks were cruelly mistreated in those days.