Okies Road Analysis

The Okies Road: Not One of Opportunity, But One of Unification When economic troubles occur, as they did during the Great Depression, countless people are impacted. People lost their entire way of life during this unfortunate time period. The demographic that was impacted the worst were arguably the so-called Okies. Okies was a derogatory name bestowed upon the migrant farmers who left Oklahoma and the surrounding states during the Dust Bowl for California in their quest to regain and better their lives. Their constant search highlighted their determination, which was one of the group’s brightest qualities as a whole. Woody Guthrie, a former Okie himself, produced multiple songs pertaining to the Okies and the obstacles they had to overcome.
Guthrie’s word choice implies a separation was evident between the rich farm owners and these poor migrant farmers. He writes the song from a first-person tone, and his word choice implies the different factions. Throughout the duration of the song, he says “we” on eight occasions and “our” an additional two. This puts the large group of Okies into one large, cohesive group. On the other hand, he states, “your crops and in your fruit,” directing this line to the wealthy land owners. Guthrie sees economic and class differences as the main divide among the population of California. The fact that he says “your” is important because it gives the farm owners an upper hand in the social hierarchy. The have ownership of the goods, and the Okies are just stopgap workers who are used as a means of production. The Okies could only hope to achieve this level of property, and they migrated to California with these hopes in mind. As Shindo writes, “The Okie migrants came to California in belief that after working in the fields as wage laborers for a season or two, they would be able to afford a down payment on a piece of land… They ‘wanted fiercely to resettle on property of their own,’ sociologist Lillian Criesler wrote in 1940.” These aspirations were virtually impossible, as individual family farms had no chance to compete with the industrial farms, as was evidenced by what happened
them” was also a result of discriminatory attitudes towards the Okies by the Californians. Alexander writes, “Whereas earlier groups could afford to relocate and thus were perceived to have been expanding westward with the rest of the country, the Okies of the 1930s were often characterized by Californians as poor whites who were pushed by economic desperation from their home states.” This perception combined with the commercialization, which as mentioned before forced the Okies to be replaceable seasonal laborers, to ruin any economic desires of the Okies and to make them the bottom of the social ladder (Alexander). This is perhaps why Guthrie complains, “Hard, it’s always been that way,” in addition to the fact that, “this old world is a hard world for a dust bowl refugee.” Guthrie and other Okies were subject to prejudice by the Californians, which made any progress an uphill