Topics for final exam

Literature of Great Depression

The Great Depression underscores an important period in the history of American literature. During this period 1929-39, many American authors veered towards writing literary works that addressed the social impacts of the Depression on American families. Poverty surfaced as a recurring theme in the work of an onslaught of new authors. Some sought revolutionary political reform while others called for social reform. Many writers rejected the idea of capitalism and its so-called progress and formed allegiance with the Communist Party. 2 Some novelists drew inspiration from probing deeper in the lives of the poor and the working class. Others looked to politics and economics to pen many fictional representations of poverty in American during the Great Depression. Two distinct styles of writing emerged: proletariat and social reform or sociological novels. According to Foley (1993), “[d]epression-era proletarian literature, arising as it did in a moment when many felt the great day was coming soon, offers sustenance and inspiration … to those who still hope and work for the great day to come” (p. viii). Foley (1993) states, “many proletarian writers focused on the formation of working-class experience and consciousness (or false consciousness) in relation to race and gender” (p. viii). However, sociological novels bear similar characteristics to problem novels. According to Holman (1977), sociological novels are “a form of the PROBLEM NOVEL which centers its principal attention on the nature, function, and effect of the society in which the characters live and on the social forces playing upon them” (p. 502). One of the most poignant literary works of the Depression Era came from the pen of John Steinbeck. Through his literary works, Steinbeck emerged as one of the first American authors who called for social reforms. The Grapes of Wrath (2009), an American realist novel, records the history and lives of dislocated, poor, white, sharecropping farmers from Oklahoma. The story depicts a family that joined the Westward migration to California in search of jobs advertised on handbills throughout the villages in Sallisaw, Oklahoma. During the era of the Great Depression, poverty emerged as one of the most prevalent themes in society and literary works. However, poverty was not confined to any given race or region. Instead, it had sprawling effects especially on the lower class or “‘the American Underclass:’ those ‘people who [were] seen to be stuck more or less 3 permanently at the bottom’” (Gandal, 1997, p. 3-4). Millions of immigrants joined the American underclass the moment they left the shores of Ellis Island

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