Dust Bowl Research Paper

1499 Words3 Pages

Natural Disasters have always been a major part of history. The disasters have helped shape history as we know it today. The influence of these disasters also can’t be ignored. One such disaster that left its mark on history was the Dust Bowl. The Dust Bowl was a period in the 30s in which severe dust storms swept across Southern plains of the United States (Dust Bowl). The Dust Bowl got its name when it first appeared in a newspaper article on April 15, 1935 (Shum). The Dust Bowl occurred due to widespread drought in the region and severe erosion (Long 1). The drought and violent winds caused widespread crop failure and the discouraged farmers did not practice proper erosion prevention measures (Long 1). The Storm engulfed the plains in a …show more content…

“Dust storms carry a noxious mix of fungi, heavy metals from pollution, fertilizers, stockyard fecal matter, chemicals and bacteria, which can cause cardiovascular disease, eye diseases and other illnesses” (Romm) Crops, livestock, and people were killed by these devastating storms (Dust Bowl). The survivors of these storms were eventually forced to migrate due to harsh conditions and in search of work (Dust Bowl). The Dust Bowl had a significant impact on people’s lives during the 30s. The disaster inspired people to make works on the disaster such as, “The Grapes of Wrath”, and Woodie Guthrie’s “Dust Bowl Ballads” (Mcleman). These works helped give an insight to the storm’s impact on people’s lives and the economy. Upon researching the dust bowl there is one important lesson to be learned. The social issues created by the Dust Bowl, the Dust Bowl Ballads, and trusting in God's plans show faith is essential when dealing with natural …show more content…

"What we learned from the Dust Bowl: lessons in science, policy, and adaptation." Population and Environment, vol. 35, no. 4, June 2014, pp. 417-40. ProQuest Central, https://link-springer-com.ezproxy.liberty.edu/article/10.1007%2Fs11111-013-0190-z#citeas. Accessed 27 May 2018.
Romm, Joe. Dust-Bowlification Threatens Public Health With More Asthma Attacks, Toxic Chemicals And Disease, 29 Aug. 2012, thinkprogress.org/dust-bowlification-threatens-public-health-with-more-asthma-attacks-toxic-chemicals-and-disease-8785556d396f/. Accessed 27 May 2018. Shumsky, Neil L. "Dust, Disease, Death and Deity: Constructing and Deconstructing the "Dust Bowl"." The Journal of American Culture, vol. 38, no. 3, Sept. 2015, pp. 218-31. ProQuest Central, ezproxy.liberty.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.liberty.edu/docview/1852704717?accountid=12085. Accessed 27 May 2018.
The Bible. English Standard Version, Crossway Bibles, 2016
Wishart, David J. Oakies, plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.ii.044. Accessed 4 June 2018.
Woody Guthrie. “Dust Bowl Ballads”, Victor Records,1940. Spotify,

Show More
Related

  • The Grapes Of Wrath Rhetorical Analysis

    1056 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Grapes of Wrath explicates on the Dust Bowl era as the reader follows the story of the Joads in the narrative chapters, and the migrants in expository chapters. Steinbeck creates an urgent tone by using repetition many times throughout the book. He also tries to focus readers on how the Dust Bowl threatened migrant dreams using powerful imagery. As well as that, he creates symbols to teach the upper class how the Dust Bowl crushed the people’s goals. In The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck utilizes imagery, symbolism, and repetition to demonstrate how the Dust Bowl threatened the “American Dream.”

    Read More

  • Dust Bowl Dbq

    585 Words  | 2 Pages

    To begin with, the “Dust Bowl” was one of the causes of economic fallout which resulted in the Great Depression. Because the “Dust Bowl” destroyed crops which were used to sell and make profit, the government had to give up a lot of money in order to try and help the people and land affected by the “Dust Bowl”. The “Dust Bowl” refers to a time during the 1930’s where the Great Plains region was drastically devastated by drought. All of the areas (Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico) all had little to no rainfall, light soil, and high winds, which were not a very suitable combination. The drought lasted from 1934 to 1937, most of the soil during the drought lacked the better root system of grass.

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast The Dust Bowl

    453 Words  | 1 Pages

    The Dust Bowl in the 1930s was a very horrific event in the Southern Plains region of the United States. This was a period of severe windstorms & dust-storms that would blow over hundreds of miles. This stripped the soil of nutrients, and damaged the ecology and agriculture of these American lands. The 2012 drought in the Central Great Plains was a period that lasted only 4 months, through May to August, that eclipsed the record of the Dust Bowl, for the driest period. The Dust Bowl and the 2012 drought compare and contrast in many ways.

    Read More

  • Greed Exposed in The Grapes of Wrath

    1445 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Grapes of Wrath is a novel that was written by John Steinbeck. This novel explores the predicaments that families faced in the "Dust Bowl" of Western America. The story shows how the Joad families, like many other families, were made to leave their homes because big business took over and the little man was left to fend for himself. Times were changing and families had to adjust even if that meant starting a whole different life in a brand new place. The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck portrays the drawbacks of a capitalist system through the landowners who take advantage of small farmers and through the use of symbolism.

    Read More

  • What Caused The Dust Bowl?

    2377 Words  | 5 Pages

    One of America’s most beloved books is John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. The book portrays a family, the Joads, who leave Oklahoma and move to California in search of a more prosperous life. Steinbeck’s book garnered acclaim both from critics and from the American public. The story struck a chord with the American people because Steinbeck truly captured the angst and heartbreak of those directly impacted by the Dust Bowl disaster. To truly comprehend the havoc the Dust Bowl wreaked, one must first understand how and why the Dust Bowl took place and who it affected the most. The Dust Bowl was the result of a conglomeration of weather, falling crop prices, and government policies.

    Read More

  • Dust Bowl Essay

    1207 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Key Factors Of The Dust Bowl

    712 Words  | 2 Pages

    (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.”

    Read More

  • Ken Burns The Dust Bowl

    297 Words  | 1 Pages

    Chase, I enjoyed Ken Burns’ The Dust Bowl as well, and I believe it was for reasons that you brought up as the music and photos from the era used in its production. While reading your statement about the documentary’s “emotional power” really caught my attention and reminded me of a quote from Siobhan McHugh’s article. In her article, McHugh states that the tone of a person’s voice and the way that they tell their histories is something that a paper transcript cannot convey to its audience (McHugh, 188). Your post on The Dust Bowl documentary and the oral histories used by Burns reminded me of this quote because, as you said, the use of these personal histories is supposed to strike emotion in its audience. With videos, music, and oral history

    Read More

  • The Dustbowl of America in the 1930s

    857 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Dust Bowl of North America refers to a catastrophe in the early 1930's when vast areas of the Midwestern and Western farm lands of America became wastelands. This occurred due to a series of dry years which coincided with the extension of agriculture in unsuitable lands. Droughts and dust storms caused by poor tillage practices devastated farms and ranches of the Great Plains; therefore, causing a great exodus of its inhabitants to other, more fertile, lands. The problem had become so great that a nation wide effort was made to resolve the problem. Beginning in 1935, extensive efforts were made by both federal and state governments to develop adequate programs for soil conservation and for the rehabilitation of the dust bowl. Eventually, thanks to government aid, farming became possible again in the Dust Bowl; consequently, farmers have learnt many valuable lessons from this dilemma.

    Read More

  • Dust Bowl Odyssey Essay

    1061 Words  | 3 Pages

    The “Dust Bowl Odyssey” presented an initial perspective of why families migrated from drought-ridden, Dust Bowl, areas to California. Edward Carr cautions, “Interpretation plays a necessary part in establishing the facts of history, and because no existing interpretation is wholly objective, on interpretation is a good as another, and the facts of history are in principle not amendable to objective interpretation” (Carr, 1961, p. 31). Historians had to separate the prejudices, assumptions, and beliefs of the times in order to have a more objective reasoning of the migration. The migration had valid evidence that supported against the theory of the Dust Bowl being the only contributor. Rather there were other historical contributions to

    Read More

  • Dust Pneumonia Research Paper

    370 Words  | 1 Pages

    It’s June 10, 1930 in our little Oklahoma home, and Willie, ma, pa and I are sitting in the kitchen eating breakfast. We talk about all the things that have been going on in town. Like the all the dust storms, and this thing called “Dust Pneumonia”. In the past two weeks, there have been 8 dust storms, and 3 people have died from dust pneumonia. Everybody walks around coughing and sneezing dust. Dust storms have almost taken over the state.

    Read More

  • The Dust Bowl

    1050 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Exemplification Essay: Is Agriculture Worth The Dust Bowl?

    646 Words  | 2 Pages

    The dust mostly comes from farming and the agricultural the farmers learned to keep their crops healthy and looking good to eat. (Methods Prevent Another Dust Bowl) "From the perspective of agricultural changes, irrigation was huge" (About The Dust Bowl) The agricultural devastation helped to lengthen the Depression whose effects were felt worldwide. Poor agricultural practices and years of sustained drought caused the Dust Bowl. But since the Dust Bowl, many farmers have figured out new ways that would not make the Dust Bowl comeback ever

    Read More

  • Dust Bowl Refugee Poem Analysis

    960 Words  | 2 Pages

    “Dust Bowl Refugee” is a native, Anglo-American protest song written by Woody Guthrie in 1938 (Song Timeline) and also performed by him in 1940 and released on Victor-26623 (Online Discography Project), the recording of which was done by Alan Lomax. The song describes, in first person, the hardships of settlers in the section of the United States known as the Dust Bowl, as well as the struggles they faced in fleeing the region and trying to establish new homes in places such as California. This is certainly an appropriate song for discussing the class and social identity of a Southern community affected by migration, because although, the Southern identity is not directly referenced, numerous Southerners who migrated into these areas experienced the phenomena

    Read More

  • The Theme of Man vs. Environment in The Grapes of Wrath

    1405 Words  | 3 Pages

    The opening chapter paints a vivid picture of the situation facing the drought-stricken farmers of Oklahoma. Dust is described a covering everything, smothering the life out of anything that wants to grow.  The dust is symbolic of the erosion of the lives of the people.  The dust is synonymous with "deadness". The land is ruined ^way of life (farming) gone, people ^uprooted and forced to leave.  Secondly, the dust stands for ^profiteering banks in the background that squeeze the life out the land by forcing the people off the land. The soil, the people (farmers) have been drained of life and are exploited:

    Read More

More about Dust Bowl Research Paper

Open Document