USING RESEARCH TO BUILD UP CONTEXT
"The play is set just after the event known as the "Dust Bowl" in America. For almost 10 years, the Southern states of the US were covered in major dust storms which wiped out the crops and destroyed homes. History says "The simplest acts of life - breathing, eating a meal, taking a walk - were no longer simple. Children wore dust masks to and from schools, women hung wet sheets over the windows in a futile attempt to stop the dirt, farmers watched helplessly as their crops blew away." Steinbeck wrote his novel The Grapes of Wrath in 1939 towards the end of the natural disaster."
"On the fourteenth day of April in 1935
There struck the worst of dust storms that ever filled the sky...
From Oklahoma City to the Arizona Line
Dakota and Nebraska to the lazy Rio Grande
It fell across our city like a curtain of black rolled down,
We thought it was our judgment, we thought it was our doom..."
~ Woody Guthrie (from his song, "The Great Dust Storm")
"Merciless winds tore up the soil that once gave the Southern Great Plains life and hurled it in roaring black clouds across the nation. Hopelessly indebted farmers fed tumbleweed to their cattle, and, in the case of one Oklahoma town, to their children. By the 1930s, years of injudicious cultivation had devastated 100 million acres of Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico."
~ Timothy Egan
Here is anouther groups interpretation of the play:
http://vimeo.com/60478981
The Grapes of Wrath is set just after the Roaring Twenties in America, because of the huge change in economic power in the country, there was a huge impact on everyone. Especially made even worse by the dust bowl!
The New Deal
The American Depression years
After the Wall Street Crash in 1929, America plunged into a severe economic crisis. The 1930s would come to be referred to as the Great Depression.
Industries and businesses faced low demand for their products (Companies made new consumer goods like fridges and radios, Henry Fords Model T is an example of this) as people tried to save what little money they had. Banks collapsed as loan repayments went unpaid and unemployment reached unprecedented levels. All over America people were living in poverty.
The laissez-faire politics of the Republican Party (Means leave alone politics in French. Basically the government do as little as possible) that had helped create the economic boom of the 1920s no longer seemed relevant. In 1932, the American people elected the Democrat, Franklin D. Roosevelt, because he promised to tackle America's many problems.
A New Deal for America
"I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people"
This statement by Roosevelt during the election campaign of 1932 caught the attention of the American public. The "New Deal" has become the accepted name for the policies followed by the Roosevelt administrations during the 1930s.
What was Roosevelt trying to achieve?
Roosevelt had three basic aims which directed his actions:
- Help the victims of the Depression. Millions of ordinary Americans faced unemployment, hunger, and poverty. Roosevelt was determined to help them.
- Encourage economic recovery. The Depression was a disaster for America. Roosevelt knew that he had to take action to encourage recovery, to get the nation back to work.
- Reform the economic system. The whole economic system would have to be altered so that there would never again be a Depression as bad as the 1930s.
To achieve these objectives, Roosevelt decided that direct action and intervention by the federal government would be necessary. The days of laissez-faire, of the government doing as little as possible, were over.
The 'Alphabet' agencies, FERA, AAA, NRA, PWA, CCC, TVA
Roosevelt closed the banks in America for 100 days, in this time he set up a group called the brains trust to inspect every bank in the country to make sure they were working to the law. These Alphabet Agencies were certainly the best known aspects of the New Deal. In effect, they were new government departments set up to implement Roosevelt's policies. For example:
- Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA). This helped the poor in a number of basic ways, such as giving clothing grants and setting up soup kitchens for the poor.
- Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA). This tried to help farmers by controlling farm production and stabilising prices. It was an attempt to end the over-production and falling agricultural prices that had crippled American farmers.
- National Recovery Administration (NRA). This tried to help industry and factory workers by increasing wages and improving hours and conditions.
- Public Works Administration (PWA). This created jobs by paying unemployed people to build schools, bridges and dams. This was replaced by the Works Progress Administration in 1935.
- Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Similar to the PWA, this department provided jobs to large numbers of young men in conservation schemes in the countryside.
- Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). This scheme brought hydro-electric power to seven states in the Tennessee Valley, one of the worst affected areas of the country. Dams and power-plants were built, creating many jobs.
In addition to this, Roosevelt's administration carried out major reforms to the American Stock Exchange and the banking system. There were two key elements in Roosevelt's plans to repair the economic damage caused by the Wall Street Crash. These were, ending the practices of cheap credit from banks and irresponsible share trading on the Stock Exchange.
