The first interview I read was with Jane Yoder and her son Tom. She talked about the effects of the Great Depression on the average person. Her father was an immigrant and needed work. She said that,"During the depression, my father took a great deal of psychological abuse." Reading this opened up my eyes to see that the depression was more than an time of a bad economy. Just like today's times though, the rich were still rich. Her father was employed thanks to the WPA but work still defined the class people lived in. Jane said, "They were just two separate, separate worlds." In all times during American history there have been different classes however during this time the distance between them was huge. I feel that this debate over how big the gap should be needs to be settled so that America doesn't have anything similar to the great depression ever again. Jane's son, Tom, talked about how the only way to move foreword was to forget about the past. I agree with this because the only way to improve is to reflect and take self action.
The second interview I read was with Peggy Terry and her mother Mary Owsley. Mary Owsley was the spokesperson for poor southern whites. Life was hard because her husband had shell shock which made him "restless and disturbed from the war." I thought this was interesting because it shows a time in U.S. history when women's roles had changed to having more power. Women needed to step up in this time too because of disasters such as the dust bowl. Mary also said, "There were a lot of suicides that I know of." People weren't able to make a living and thought that death was the only option. Peggy did say however, that reading The grapes of wrath helped cope with the hard times. I think that this is because it let everyone known that the nation was struggling and that they needed to work together to get out of the poor economic times.
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