During the Great Depression of the 1930’s, there was mass unemployment, starvation, and millions desperate for a job. Farmers in the midwest, in particular, were hounding for employment, for their farms were destroyed by drought, the dust that followed the drought, the sweltering summers, and the harsh winters. They could no longer sustain a suitable life on their land, so they moved west to California, where jobs working on large farms were advertized. Workers expected livable wages and a stable environment, but instead, they encountered thousands workers looking for the same job as the person next to them, living on pitiful wages and in ratty tents with their families dying of starvation.
People set out to make the unjust, terrible conditions of the migrant workers known. Dorothea Lange and John Steinbeck are both known for their works in which they capture the struggles of migrant workers in California. Both have one main goal in their respective …show more content…
However, the two artists have very different tones and approaches towards the reader. Lange is subtle, relative to Steinbeck, on her message about the hardships migrant workers go through. Much of the subtlety comes from her medium: photography. Photography is often open to interpretation because, unlike a written work, it typically doesn’t convey a direct message via words. But, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. In order to understand her message, you have to ask yourself: Why did Lange decide to show starving women and children or the men working on the fields as opposed to the farm owners lounging about in their office, hardly a care in the world? She showed the starving people because her goal was to make people who will see her photographs empathize and possibly drive them to make a change, especially people in the government. Steinbeck’s “Starvation Under the Orange Trees” is a lot more blunt and straight-forward than Lange’s work. The beginning of the article tries to
People set out to make the unjust, terrible conditions of the migrant workers known. Dorothea Lange and John Steinbeck are both known for their works in which they capture the struggles of migrant workers in California. Both have one main goal in their respective …show more content…
However, the two artists have very different tones and approaches towards the reader. Lange is subtle, relative to Steinbeck, on her message about the hardships migrant workers go through. Much of the subtlety comes from her medium: photography. Photography is often open to interpretation because, unlike a written work, it typically doesn’t convey a direct message via words. But, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. In order to understand her message, you have to ask yourself: Why did Lange decide to show starving women and children or the men working on the fields as opposed to the farm owners lounging about in their office, hardly a care in the world? She showed the starving people because her goal was to make people who will see her photographs empathize and possibly drive them to make a change, especially people in the government. Steinbeck’s “Starvation Under the Orange Trees” is a lot more blunt and straight-forward than Lange’s work. The beginning of the article tries to