Transcript From Depression to Cold War

From Depression to Cold War
1930s – 1960s
Age of:
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Economic Crisis
World War II
Global Responsibility
Unease about Nuclear Conflict
Historical, Social, and Cultural
Forces
The Depression
 stock market crash
 bank failures
 unemployment
The New Deal
 public employment – public works and the
arts
 Social Security Act
Persistent Racism
 African Americans, Jews, Native Americans
 segregation and violence
The Dust Bowl
 drought and poor farming methods on the
Great Plains
 winds blew topsoil as far as the Atlantic
Coast
 Farm Security Administration (migrants)
 Soil Conservation Service
World War II and the Cold War
 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
(December 7, 1941)
 United States vs The Soviet Union
 Cold War – massive buildup of armaments
(nuclear
 weapons)
Big Ideas:
 Return to Regionalism
 Life in the City
 The United States and the World
The New Regionalism
 John Steinbeck and migrant workers
 toughness & optimism in face of hardship
and discrimination
 a belief in the ability of ordinary people to
defeat despair
 William Faulkner & Yoknapatowpha County,
Mississippi
 burden of the past
 complexity of human relationships (rich and
poor, white and black, traditional and
modern)
 Flannery O’Conner & Southern Gothic
 characters faced with forces that threaten to
change their lives and beliefs forever
Life in the City
 urbanization of America (by 1920 urban population
exceeded rural population)
 cultural life vs slums and poverty
 E. B. White and New York City
 Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (racial & social stereotypes of
African Americans)
 Bernard Malamud and Brooklyn (urban Jews)
 Gwendolyn Brooks and Bronzeville (poverty and racism on
south side of Chicago)
 Suburbia (the American dream vs cultural wasteland)
United States and the World
 The “good war” and the home front
USA role in victory – changes in US economy
 Tension on the home front
racism (race riots) and ethnic animosities
(Japanese)
 The Holocaust
 The Cold War
capitalism vs communism
John Steinbeck
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1902 – 1968
Born and raised in Salinas, California
Went to Stanford University
but left to do various odd jobs
Wrote about:
 The Great Depression
 society’s forgotten people (especially
migrant farm workers)
Characteristics of his writing:
 strong sense of social justice
 strong characters who struggle to survive &
preserve their dignity
 tragedy
Wrote:
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The Pearl
The Grapes of Wrath (Pulitzer Prize 1940)
Of Mice and Men
“Breakfast”
 Won Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962
Literary element
implied theme (review – under theme)
William Faulkner
 1897 – 1962
 “Count No’count” – dropped out of high school and
college
 Name was spelled Falkner but was misspelled by
a printer (adding the u) which he kept
 A “new regionalist” – the South (Mississippi)
 Created Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi
 Believes that “man will prevail”
Wrote in an experimental new style
of fiction which included:
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Repetition
Multiple points of view
Stream of consciousness
Creative sentence structure and punctuation
Won Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950
Wrote:
 The Sound and the Fury
 “A Rose for Emily”
Literary element:
 Foreshadowing (review)
Eudora Welty
 1909 – 2001
 Lived her whole life in Jackson, Mississippi
 Was a writer for the Works Progress
Administration (wrote articles about
construction and art projects for them)
 A “Southern Gentlewoman” (wrote about
Southern values and complicated history)
Wrote:
 “A Worn Path”
Literary element:
 description – (review) a detailed portrayal of
a person, a place, an object, or an event.
Good descriptive writing appeals to the
senses through imagery. Eudora Welty’s
description of Phoenix Jackson in “A Worn
Path” is a good example of description.
Richard Wright
 1908 – 1960
 At 8 years old, witnessed the lynching of his
uncle by a group of white men
 Wrote about: racism, violence, injustice,
poverty, and despair experienced by African
Americans
 Moved to Paris in 1947
Wrote:
 Uncle Tom’s Children
 Native Son
 Black Boy (autobiography)
Literary elements:
 Autobiography (review)
 flash-forward – An interruption in the
chronological sequence of a narrative to
leap forward in time. Richard Wright uses
this device in his autobiography, Black Boy,
when he describes a visit to his father that
occurs many years after the time of the
story.
Flannery O’Connor
 1925 – 1964
 From Georgia
 Attended Iowa Writer’s Workshop at the
University of Iowa
 Writing is classified as “Southern Gothic”
 (eccentric / grotesque characters living in
small Southern towns)
 Died at 39 of lupus
Wrote:
 “The Life You Save May Be Your Own”
Literary element
 Dialogue – conversation between characters
in a literary work. Dialogue can contribute to
characterization, create mood, advance the
plot, and develop theme.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
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1882 – 1945
Married to Eleanor
Contracted polio in 1921
Elected to New York State Senate
Governor of New York
President of the United States 4 times
New Deal
World War II
Died of a stroke a few months before the end of
the war
Wrote:
 “War Message to Congress”
 December 8, 1941
Literary Element
 Oratory (review)
 Author’s purpose (review)
Elie Wiesel
 1928 –
 A Holocaust survivor – at 15 sent to Auschwitz –
Birkenau – Mother and younger sister sent to gas
chamber – Father died at Buchenwald
 Called “conscience of the Holocaust”
 Spoke at dedication of U.S. Holocaust Museum
 “For the dead and living, we must bear witness.”
 Became a U.S. citizen
 Won Nobel Peace Prize in 1986
 Warned against “danger of indifference”
Wrote:
 Night
 “All Rivers Run to the Sea”
Literary element:
 Narrator – the person who tells a story. The
narrator may be a character in the story or
outside the story.