Preview

The Dust Bowl Odyssey

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
921 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Dust Bowl Odyssey
The Dust Bowl Odyssey begins with an excerpt from the famous novel The Grapes of Wrath written by John Steinbeck. The novel told the story of the Joad family during the depression era and their journey from Oklahoma to California in hopes of getting their lives back on track. The book, which was written in 1939, was Steinbecks attempt to not only describe the plight of migrant farm workers during the Depression but to also offer sharp criticism of the polities that has caused the predicament in the first place. The novel is often recognized as a chronicle of the Depression and as a commentary of the economic and social systems that caused it.

The "Dust Bowl" phenomenon occurred throughout western Oklahoma and Kansas and in the Texas panhandle. Severe drought during the 1930's had led to massive agricultural failures in the Southwest. These areas had been heavily overcultivated by the wheat farmers for the last decades and were covered with millions of acres of loose, uncovered topsoil. Without precipitation the crops withered and died. The topsoil, which did not have any anchoring roots, was picked up by the winds and carried in billowing clouds across the region. Huge dust storms blew across the area, at times blocking out the sun and even suffocating those caught unprepared.

The Grapes of Wrath recounts the story of the Great Depression in Southwest America. By the mid-1930s, the drought had destroyed multitudes of farm families, and America had fallen into the Great Depression. Unable to pay their mortgages or invest in the kinds of industrial equipment now required, many Dust Bowl farmers were forced to leave their land. Without employment, thousands of families traveled to California in hopes of finding new means of survival. But the farm country of California quickly became overcrowded with the migrant workers.
Jobs and food were scarce, and the migrants faced prejudice and hostility from the Californians, who labeled them "Okies." These workers and their

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Dust Bowl Dbq Analysis

    • 64 Words
    • 1 Page

    Another major factor is over cultivation by farmers (DocB). The role it played in the Dust Bowl is the removal of prairie grass which exposed the fine topsoil to the harsh drought. One sheepherder was quoted as saying “Grass is what holds the earth together”. This shows that the over cultivation of prairie grass exposed the topsoil which was dried and turned into dust.…

    • 64 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The crash of the stock market hit in 1929 leading America in a downward spiral; Wall Street loses countless investors, unemployment rates skyrocket, and the devastating American Dust Bowl strikes the Great Plains. Making ends meet seems virtually impossible for the majority of individuals in the United States, especially for those affected by both the economic crisis and the Dust bowl. In John Steinbeck's realistic novel, The Grapes of Wrath, intercalary chapters are implemented throughout the work to adumbrate the difficult lifestyle farmers have to endure due to the Great Depression and the American Dust Bowl.…

    • 96 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Originally covered with grasses that held the fine soil in place, the land of the southern plains was plowed by settlers who brought their farming techniques with them when they homesteaded the area.” The Dust Bowl, otherwise known as “The Dirty Thirties”, was made possible by World War I (WWI) and The Great Depression. Wheat was easy to grow and it caused a high demand. Little was known that the misuse of the land would bring upon the greatest influence behind the importance of conserving nature and its importance of carefully using the land. The dust storms were brought on by a mix of natural components and human activities. Thus, the tempests brought on numerous individuals to leave their homes, endure the dust, and lastly change how they…

    • 140 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    During The Great Depression the Dust Bowl started and affected many of the rural poor people. Farmers were making an abundance of crops so they cut dawn all the trees to make even more. This did not help the farmers but destroy their farms. An abundance of top soil was pushed up and created a big black cloud started to head towards the farms and soon the Dust Bowl started. In the book Grapes Of Wrath by John Steinbeck, the Joad family was deeply affected by the Dust Bowl. The family was farmers so being hit by the storm put them into poverty and even caused them to lose their home. When the Dust Bowl came the Joads farm was covered in dust and…

    • 773 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Dust Bowl that occurred in the 1930’s along with the Great Depression was one of the lowest times in American history. The novel, The Grapes of Wrath written by John Steinbeck, takes place during this time period. The Grapes of Wrath is told from the perspective of the Joads, who are coerced to leave their home and farm in Oklahoma. The novel documents their journey traveling from Oklahoma to California. The protagonist in this novel, Tom Joad, is first introduced in Chapter 2 when he has to hitch a ride with a truck driver in order to return to his family. From the moment Tom was introduced till the last time he occurs in the novel, one should notice a significant change in his actions and behaviors. Tom Joad goes through a journey of self-change, which in the end turns him into a better person than he was before.…

    • 710 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The novel, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, is a classic American novel about the Great Depression. The novel is written in incalerarly chapters and is about the struggles that migrant workers faced during this time. When Steinbeck was writing his novel, he did lots of research and the struggles he writes about are from real stories. As we look closely at the chapters individually, from the syntax and diction, we are able to conclude the overall purpose of the novel. Steinbeck’s use of parallelism and diction, in chapter 5, supports his message that the farmers were against something they could not take down alone.…

    • 1275 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Professor Donald Worster has another theory in mind. "Professor Worster is a leader in the field of environmental history. He is a professor at the University of Kansas and has written several book on environmental topics". In his book, Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930's he states;…

    • 214 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    The dust bowl was a tragic time in America for so many families and John Steinbeck does a great job at getting up-close and personal with one family to show these tragedies. In the novel, “The Grapes of Wrath”, John Steinbeck employed a variety of rhetorical devices, such as asyndeton, personification and simile, in order to persuade his readers to enact positive change from the turmoil of the Great Depression. Throughout the novel, Steinbeck tells the fictional narrative of Tom Joad and his family, while exploring social issues and the hardships of families who had to endure the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. Steinbeck’s purpose was to challenge readers to look at the harsh realities around them for “the purpose of improvement”. The rhetorical strategies used in the “Grapes of Wrath” elicit a deeper understanding from its readers for the hardships these migrants faced and helped them to fight for a better way. (John Steinbeck, "Banquet Speech," Nobel Foundation, http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1962/steinbeck-speech.html, Accessed 30 August 2013.)…

    • 1767 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Originally covered with grasses that held the fine soil in place, the land of the southern plains was plowed by settlers who brought their farming techniques with them when they homesteaded the area.” The Dust Bowl, also called "The Dirty Thirties", was made conceivable by World War I (WWI) and The Great Depression. Wheat was anything but difficult to develop and it brought on a popularity amongst everyone. Little was realized that the abuse of the area would bring upon the best impact behind the significance of saving nature and its significance of deliberately utilizing the area. The dust storms were brought on by a mix of natural components and human activities. Thus, the tempests conveyed on numerous individuals to leave their homes, persevere through the dust, and lastly change how they cultivated, keeping in mind the end goal to avert comparable characteristic fiascos.…

    • 487 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Dust Bowl Research Paper

    • 1330 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Can you imagine waking up in the morning and its pitch black outside? Would you be able to stand the dirt and the little rocks hitting your face everyday? Could you stand to inhale the dirt while you took a breath? What about eating the dirt that falls into your food? In the 1930’s in the Southern Plains, these people went through the worst, horrible experience of dust storms for nearly a decade. No sunrays will hit inside your house giving the warmth, just a big pitch-black cloud covering the whole land with fast winds and rocks hitting your face. This history-making storm was a natural disaster and the worst man made storm that was known as the Dust Bowl or as the dirty thirties. It was a damage and failure to apply dry land farming methods…

    • 1330 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Dust Bowl Dbq

    • 495 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Seemingly innocent, in the 1900s there began the worst manmade catastrophe to ever be recorded in history, the Dust Bowl. The Dust Bowl, also referred to as the “Dirty Thirties,” was a time of extremely disastrous dust storms that significantly affected the agriculture of the U.S. Promised cheap land, farmers engulfed the Southern Plains and began to plow the land to grow wheat, not taking into consideration the climate and soil or ecology of the land; and there was the biggest mistake made in the Dust Bowl. During the drought of the 1930s, the soil was turned into dust and the wind blew the dust in huge clouds, which would sometimes cause the sky to blacken, giving it the name “black blizzard.” Dust storms mostly affected areas of Texas,…

    • 495 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Dust Bowl, also known as the Dirty Thirties, was a period of severe dust storms that greatly hurt agriculture in the US and Canada during the 1930s. Severe droughts and a failure to dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion caused the phenomenon. The Dust Bowl was in the southern states, mainly near the coast. The Dust Bowl drought started in 1934 and ended in 1937. The Dust Bowl was a long period of time where people had nothing but their own…

    • 434 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The Dust Bowl

    • 759 Words
    • 4 Pages

    A. Significant environmental /geographical factors that contributed to the development or expansion of the United States:…

    • 759 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Dust Bowl is both a manmade and a natural disaster. Beginning with World War I, the wheat crop of the United States was flowing as gold as demand increased. Tempted by the record-breaking wheat prices and the promise of land developers that "rain after plowing," farmers using new gasoline tractors plowed and grazed the southern plains. When drought farmers and the Great Depression emerged in the early 1930s, the wheat market economy collapsed. Great Depression: After many years of bad practice, the Great Recession has made it impossible for farmers to grow as many crops as they can. Thus, many parts of the delta are deserted even by grass. Cattle deaths: Cattle were blinded by the impact of the Dust Bowl, and the sky was overwhelmed by…

    • 143 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Causes Of The Dust Bowl

    • 605 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The Dust Bowl began on Thursday, April 18, 1935, it was a huge, black, cloud of dirt, piled up on the western horizon. This storm was enormous and deadly. The Dust Bowl affected Oklahoma, Texas, parts of Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico. These states were vulnerable to the dust storm due to their lack of rainfall, light soil, and high winds. As a result, soil lacked the the strong roots of grass in order to stay in place, this made it easier for high, hectic winds to get a hold of the soil. Years before the Dust Bowl, ranchers and farmers looking for new land to grow crops and maintain live stock stumble across this land. Hoping to finally settle down and start their business; however, on 1935, the very land that gave them hope, now gave them…

    • 605 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays