Great DepressionCulture and society in the Great Depression > New forms of cultural expression > FictionThe social consciousness of the theatre was duplicated in some of the widely read novels of the 1930s. Here, too, authors strove for a fidelity to the sombre facts of the Depression experience. James T. Farrell's Studs Lonigan trilogy (1932, 1934, 1935) explored the claustrophobic world of lower-middle-class Irish Catholics, while Richard Wright's Native Son (1940) offered a harrowing portrait of a young African American man imprisoned in white America, capable of asserting his identity only through fear-drenched acts of violence.It was this sense of constriction, the fear of shrinking natural and economic resources, the feeling that America was no longer buoyant and youthfulno longer a land of infinite hope and opportunitythat captured the mood of the 1930s and underlay the message of many of its novels. John Dos Passos's trilogy U.S.A. (1930, 1932, and 1936)a multimedia history of the United States in the first three decades of the 20th century, weaving together newspaper headlines, popular songs, biographies of celebrities, fictional stories, and eloquent prose-poemswas unrelenting in its sardonic depiction of American lives wasted in the neurotic pursuit of wealth and success. John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (1939), the most illustrious protest novel of the 1930s, was an epic tribute to the Okies, those throwbacks to America's 19th-century pioneers, now run off their farms by the banks, the Dust Bowl, and the mechanization of modern agriculture, clattering in their trucks and jalopies across the Arizona desert on Route 66 to the advertised promised land in California, a despised caste of migrant labourers who (like Steinbeck's heroic earth mother, Ma Joad) still insisted that the people are indestructible no matter what tragedies they must surmount.But California might not have been a place for new beginnings; in the 1930s, as the novelist Nathanael West observed in The Day of the Locust (1939), it was more likely a destination where people went to die. In this novel, as well as in Miss Lonelyhearts (1933), Westin his fascination with bizarre personalities and psychological breakdownsmay well have expressed the deeper literary preoccupations of the 1930s more perceptively than did Wright or Steinbeck, preoccupations also reflected in John O'Hara's Appointment in Samarra (1934) and Horace McCoy's They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1935).Like West, the finest and most idiosyncratic writers of the decadeThomas Wolfe, who was obsessed with dramatizing his own life in Look Homeward, Angel (1929); F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose Tender Is the Night (1934) and The Last Tycoon (1941) contained passages of prose as haunting as anything one could find in The Great Gatsby (1925); and William Faulkner, whose The Sound and the Fury (1929), Light in August (1932), and Absalom, Absalom! (1936) would appear on any list of the great American novels of the 20th centurydid not conform to the formulas of protest or the demands of any creed. Their novels were not optimistic or pessimistic about America, nor were they radical or conservative. More often, they were apolitical. Each of these authors strove not for a timely discussion of the social problems of the Great Depression years but for a timeless meditation on the agonies of life, love, and death. This sensitivity to private human predicaments, or more specifically to what might happen over a lifetime to husbands and wives and children in a small fictional New England village called Grover's Corners, was also why Thornton Wilder's Our Town (1939), not Waiting for Lefty, came to be the most treasured and enduring play of the 1930s. Such novels and playsromantic, confessional, disturbingwould still be read or performed long after the proletarian aesthetic had lost its appeal for most Americans.

Popular Culture During the Great Depression

Period: 1930sThe popular culture of the 1930s was fraught with contradictions. It was, simultaneously, a decade of traditionalism and of modernist experimentation; of sentimentality and "hard-boiled" toughness; of longings for a simpler past and fantastic dreams of the future. It was a decade in which many Americans grew increasingly interested in tradition and folk culture. Under the leadership of Alan Lomax, the Library of Congress began to collect folk songs. Plus, folk singers like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger attracted large audiences. Henry Ford, who had revolutionized the American landscape through the mass production of cars, devoted his energies and fortune to a new project: Greenfield Village, a collection of historic homes and artifacts located near Detroit. At the same time, the Rockefeller family restored colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. Many prominent intellectuals saw modern society as excessively individualistic and fragmented. In response, they looked to the past. Eleven leading white southern intellectuals, known as the Southern Agrarians, issued a manifesto, I'll Take My Stand, urging a return to an agrarian way of life. Another group of distinguished intellectuals known as the New Humanists, led by Irving Babbitt and Paul Elmer More, extolled classical civilization as a bulwark against modern values. One of the decade's leading social critics was Lewis Mumford. In volumes like Technics and Civilization (1934), Mumford examined how the values of a pre-machine culture could be blended into modern capitalist civilization. And yet, for all the emphasis on tradition, the 1930s was also a decade in which modernism in architecture and the arts became increasingly pronounced. Martha Graham developed American modern dance. William Faulkner experimented with "stream-of-consciousness" in novels like As I Lay Dying (1930). John Dos Passos's avant garde U.S.A. trilogy combined newspaper headlines, capsule biographies, popular song lyrics, and fiction to document the disintegration of Depression-era society. The architect R. Buckminster Fuller and the industrial designer Walter Dorwin Teague employed curves and streamlining to give their projects a modern appearance. Nothing better illustrated the concern with the future than the 1939 New York World's Fair: the self-proclaimed "Fair of the Future" promised to show fairgoers "the world of tomorrow." Beset by deep anxieties and insecurities, many Americans in the 1930s hungered for heroes. Popular culture offered many: superheroes like Superman and Batman, who appeared in the new comic books of the '30s; tough, hard-boiled detectives in the fiction of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler; and radio heroes like "The Lone Ranger" or "The Shadow." The Depression was, in certain respects, a powerful unifying experience. A new phrase, "the American way of life," entered the American vernacular. Public opinion polls and statistical surveys that gave the public a better sense of what the "average American" thought, voted, and ate also emerged. The new photojournalism that appeared in new magazines like Life helped to create a common frame of reference. Yet regional, ethnic, and class differences occupied an important place in the literature of the 1930s. The great novels of the decade successfully combined social criticism and rich detail about the facts of American life in specific social settings. In his novels of fictional Yoknapatawpha County, William Faulkner explored the traditions and history of the South. James T. Farrell's Studs Lonigan trilogy (1932-1935) analyzed the impact of urban industrial decay on Catholic youth, while Henry Roth's Call It Sleep (1934) analyzed the assimilation of Jewish youth to American life. John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath (1939) examined the struggle of a poor Oklahoma farming family migrating to California. Richard Wright's classic Native Son (1940) analyzed the ways that poverty and prejudice in Chicago drove a young African American to crime.Hollywood played a valuable psychological role during the Great Depression. It provided reassurance to a demoralized nation. Even at the deepest depths of the Depression, 60 to 80 million Americans attended movies each week. Movies reflected a despairing public's mood during the Depression's earliest years, as Tommy-gun toting gangsters, haggard prostitutes, and sleazy backroom politicians and lawyers appeared on the screen. Screen comedies released in these years expressed an almost anarchistic disdain for traditional institutions and values. The Marx Brothers spoofed everything from patriotism to universities; W.C. Fields ridiculed families; and Mae West used sexual innuendo to poke fun at the middle class code of sexual propriety. A renewed sense of optimism generated by the New Deal combined with industry self-censorship to produce new kinds of films during the Depression's second half. G-men, detectives, western heroes, and other defenders of law and order replaced gangsters. Audiences enjoyed Frank Capra comedies and dramas in which a little man stands up against corruption and restores America to itself. A new comic genre arose--the screwball comedy. This new variety presented a world where rich heiresses wed impoverished young men, keeping alive a vision of America as a classless society. In the face of economic disaster, the fantasy world of the movies sustained a traditional American faith in individual initiative and in government and upheld a common American identity of transcending social class.The New Deal did not end the Depression. Nor did it significantly redistribute income. It did, however, provide Americans with economic security that they had never known before. The New Deal legacies include unemployment insurance, old age insurance, and insured bank deposits. The Wagner Act reduced violence in labor relations. The Securities and Exchange Commission protected stock market investments of millions of small investors. The Federal Housing Administration and Fannie Mae enabled a majority of Americans to become homeowners. The New Deal's greatest legacy was a shift in government philosophy. As a result of the New Deal, Americans came to believe that the federal government has a responsibility to ensure the health of the nation's economy and the welfare of its citizens.Other Novels about the Great Depression:

AuthorTitleSynopsis

Not all of these titles are available in the Waluga library. Please see Mrs. Sands if you have questions.

Hunt, IreneNo Promises in the WindA young man struggles to find a life for himself in the turbulent depression of the 1930s.

Curtis, ChristopherBud, Not BuddyTen-year-old Bud, a motherless boy living in Flint, Michigan, during the Great Depression, escapes a bad foster home and sets out in search of the man he believes to be his father--the renowned bandleader, H.E. Calloway of Grand Rapids.

Koller, JackieNothing to FearWhen his father moves away to find work and his mother becomes ill, Danny struggles to help his family during the Great Depression.

Crew, LindaFire on the WindThe summer before her fourteenth birthday, a fierce forest fire rages throughout northwestern Oregon and threatens the logging camp where Storie and her family live.

Taylor, MildredRoll of Thunder, Hear My CryAn African-American family living in Mississippi during the Depression of the 1930s is faced with prejudice and discrimination which its children do not understand. This book is the assigned reading for 7th graders in Mrs. Doeblers and Mrs. Yosts classes.

Taylor, MildredLet the Circle Be UnbrokenSequel to: Roll of thunder, hear my cry. Four black children growing up in rural Mississippi during the Depression experience racial antagonisms and hard times, but learn from their parents the pride and self-respect they need to survive. Some students will read this for Mrs. Doeblers or Mrs. Yosts classes.

Peck, RichardA Long Way from ChicagoA boy recounts his annual summer trips to rural Illinois with his sister during the Great Depression to visit their larger-than-life grandmother.

Peck, RichardA Year Down YonderSequel to: A Long Way from Chicago. During the recession of 1937, fifteen-year-old Mary Alice is sent to live with her feisty, larger-than-life grandmother in rural Illinois and comes to a better understanding of this fearsome woman.

Bylsma, DanPitcher's Hands Is OUT!Scooter Secory thinks his life is over when the Great Depression forces his family to move across town to live with Scooter's grandfather, but when Scooter joins the Boy Scouts, he learns that he can make friends no matter where he lives.

Tatlock, AnnA Room of My Own : a NovelThe Great Depression and a strike at the grainmill greatly changes Virginia's life and outlook as her physician father begins to work with the unemployed and the strikers.

Collier, James LincolnWorst of TimesTwelve-year-old Petey Williamson, secure in the knowledge that his father has a job, learns that things can change very quickly when the Depression hits and his family begins sliding into poverty.

Peck, Robert NewtonArlyAlthough Arly Poole seems bound to follow in his father's footsteps as a field worker in Jailtown, Florida, where his family lives in 1927 in the shadow of a cruel boss, his world suddenly seems larger when a schoolteacher comes to town.

Ryan, Pam MuozEsperanza RisingEsperanza and her mother are forced to leave their life of wealth and privilege in Mexico to go work in the labor camps of Southern California, where they must adapt to the harsh circumstances facing Mexican farm workers on the eve of the Great Depression

Steinbeck, JohnGrapes of WrathThe story of a farm family's Depression-era journey from the Dustbowl of Oklahoma to the California migrant labor camps in search of a better life.

Steinbeck, JohnRed PonyOwnership of a beautiful red pony teaches ten-year-old Jody about life and death.

Alexander, LloydGawgon and the BoyIn Depression-era Philadelphia, when eleven-year-old David is too ill to attend school, he is tutored by the unique and adventurous Aunt Annie, whose teaching combines with his imagination to greatly enrich his life.

Hasley, DennisAmazing Thinking MachineDuring the Great Depression, while their father is away looking for work, eight-year-old Patrick and thirteen-year-old Roy create a machine to help their mother make ends meet, even as she is helping tramps.

Cohen, Robert, editorDear Mrs. Roosevelt: Letters from Children of the Great DepressionIncludes bibliographical references and index. A collection of two hundred letters which were written to Mrs. Roosevelt between 1933 and 1941 by children who were asking her to help them receive material assistance during the Great Depression.

Peck, Robert NewtonExtra InningsAfter a tragic airplane crash that claims the lives of most of his family, sixteen-year-old Tate goes to live with his wealthy great-grandfather and his adopted black great-aunt Vidalia and he finds unexpected solace in the stories of her childhood spent traveling with a Depression-era Negro baseball team.

Uchida, YoshikoJar of DreamsEleven-year-old Rinko grows up in a closely-knit Japanese American family in California during the Depression, a time of great prejudice.

Earley, TonyJim the Boy: a NovelJim, living with his mother and three uncles in the small hamlet of Aliceville, North Carolina, comes of age in the Depression years and begins to realize the largeness of the world outside his happy home.