I chose these particular pieces because each one has a unique perspective that I wanted to encompass. The first image shows the dust bowl. It was a really hard time for the people who worked in the fields. The farmers and their families struggled a lot through the dust bowls years due to their inability to grow and produce food. It was hard to sustain a family in land that doesn't belong to them. I chose the second image because it depicted the struggle of the african american community. It showed how a certain groups of people were desperate for jobs and the fact that a lot of men were willing to risk their lives in order to have a paycheck by the end of the week. The men in the mural look so solemn but at the same time like they are used to the feeling. The last image is probably the oddest because when i think about the great depression i don't think about the people who were not affected by the country’s economic state. I wanted to look at the great depression through a point of view that i had not previously investigated. I chose each one for the purpose of the perspective. I think it’s interesting to see all of the sides of the Great Depression and how people experienced it.
This connects to The Grapes of wrath because it is set during the time of the great depression and it too depicts two sides on the same coin. While one story is based on the dust bowls and how difficult it is for men to let go of their pride and move on because they know the land in not fertile and the conditions are not the safest. Their reason for wanting to stay in their farms is reasonable thought, during the Great Depression it was hard to make money meaning you can’t buy anything because they don't make enough money to. The other side is the thousands and thousands of people having to get government jobs and fighting to still be their own person as they follow the rules of the big corporations out of necessity. The images relate to this because they all show an aspect of the book. You can think of the Babe Ruth picture being the corporations that still had money. The Mining one can be looked at through the perspective of having to do what a corporation wants you to do. In the case of the miners they have to do a job in which their lives are in constant danger and yet the corporations never offer the any form of healthcare for their workers. Then the dust bowl image shows what it looked like to live in the states in which it was hard to farm. Aminals along with crops and people died. It was a tough time in general.
The artwork shows how the time period was simply filled with a vast number of point of views that I had, honestly, no idea existed. Before reading the grapes of wrath and doing the assignments with Ms. Simon I had thought that during the great depression the people in the time frame simply did not have money and I knew there was a war going on but in all honesty i had never given it much thought. The images show that in this time period there were people who simply did not have the means to have a fulfilling life and in other cases the resources and the environment seemed to be against them. This time frame was not the same for all people. Yes, the majority was suffering because of the the economic disadvantages but there were people suffering because of natural disasters and others did not suffer at all.
Reflection: