I like these documents because we can learn about the situation by looking at wonderful pieces of art or watching a very well-made show. We see how they would entertain despite the misery going on.

I chose the cover of « The Grapes of Wrath » it’s an American realist novel written by John Steinbeck and it was published in 1939. I read this book a few years ago and I think it is one of the best examples to understand the great depression and its issues and result. 

Indeed, this book portrays how the great depression affected the lives of industrialists and the common people of the era in both a positive and negative way. It presents the men’s  inhumanity, the selfishness and the poverty during this period. 

Grape of Wrath is also an interesting work because it depict a forgot side of this period like the development of fellowship and the power of the family. 

 

I think this document is very important because it mark the begening of the New Deal and the anwer to the crisis.

Their first sign is asking for help and is a funding request, the second sign, with a pun, shows that they are still suffering from the crisis… 

The second document is a poster dating back 1940, during the election campaign for a second re-election of Roosevelt. The portrait of president Roosevelt is at the centre of the poster, and on the left we see the condition of USA on 1932, before Roosevelt was elected – there were “bread lines”, “homeless[ness]”, and “banks [were] closed” – and on the right we see the condition of the country on 1940, thanks to the New Deal of Roosevelt: there were “higher wages”, “low rent homes” and a “social security”. The portrait of Roosevelt is surrounded like if it was a painting; there is a grandiloquent side.

Both documents show a glorified, idealised picture of Roosevelt. It reveals that lots of people and press supported actively Roosevelt: he was a very popular president. However, the two documents hide some things: first, on 1932, when Roosevelt was elected, his program wasn’t very clear: people voted for Roosevelt knowing he will do something for them, but no what exactly. Moreover, the results of the New Deal, if they are of course positive, like the poster campaign shows it, are all the same contrasting, with still almost 14% of Americans out of work on 1940. In addition, the second document doesn’t show that the war was an important campaign subject, Roosevelt being sometimes accused of being not ready for a war, and sometimes accused of preparing US to join the Second World War (whereas Congress was at that time in favour of an isolationist policy). To conclude, if they show the victories and popularity of Roosevelt, both documents hide some things and have a committed stance.

Ma Joad : Oh, Tommy, they'd drag you out and cut you down just like they done to Casy.

Tom Joad : They'd drag me anyways. Sooner or later they'd get me for one thing if not for another. Until then...

Ma Joad : Tommy, you're not aimin' to kill nobody.

Tom Joad : No, Ma, not that. That ain't it. It's just, well as long as I'm an outlaw anyways... maybe I can do somethin'... maybe I can just find out somethin', just scrounge around and maybe find out what it is that's wrong and see if they ain't somethin' that can be done about it. I ain't thought it out all clear, Ma. I can't. I don't know enough.

Ma Joad : How am I gonna know about ya, Tommy? Why they could kill ya and I'd never know. They could hurt ya. How am I gonna know?

Tom Joad : Well, maybe it's like Casy says. A fellow ain't got a soul of his own, just little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody, then...

Ma Joad : Then what, Tom?

Tom Joad : Then it don't matter. I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build - I'll be there, too.

Ma Joad : I don't understand it, Tom.

Tom Joad : Me, neither, Ma, but - just somethin' I been thinkin' about.