Blog 23

To get a better grasp of what life was like during the Great Depression, and especially the Dust Bowl, I did some research to try and picture how the Joad's had to live in comparison to what life really was like. In 1931, a severe drought hit the Southern and Midwestern plains. As crops died and winds picked up, dust storms began. As the "Dust Bowl" photograph shows, crops literally blew away in "black blizzards" as years of poor farming practices and over-cultivation combined with the lack of rain(Calisphere). By 1934, 75 percent of the United States was severely affected by this terrible drought.

What effects me the most from the information about the Dust Bowl is the Black Blizzards. Personally, I hate white blizzard so i can not even imagine what a "Black Blizzard" would be like. However, I did learn that part of this "Dust Bowl" which lead into the Great Depression was partly farmers, much like the Joad family in Grapes of Wrath were partially responsible for the Dust Bowl. They did things that were bad for the enviroment like the over cultivation of the crops and certain practices that made it worse. This actually lessons my empathy for families like the Joad family because possibly if they would have done all the things the way they were supposed to do them then they would not have had the Dust Bowl which ended up ending their own jobs because they did practices that were bad, and were shortcuts.
I still do feel empathy especially reading things like "Black Blizzard". It would of been extremely hard to go through. I learned that in a matter of weeks everything they had fell apart. However, the Joad family never let these awful awful things get to them. They perservered and kept going. The theme of never giving up helped them get through a lot of their hardhips. Granted, they were still in poverty. At least they had each other.

"Calisphere - Dust Bowl Migration." Calisphere - A World of Digital Resources. Web. 12 Aug. 2011.

Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Penguin, 2002. Print.