It was a amalgamation of droughts and farming conditions that spearheaded the coming storm. Crops and grasses that had once held soil in its place disappeared and made it easy for wind storms to lift the top soil until everything was covered in a copious layer of silt. Not only, had the winds displaced the top soil, but they had had also displaced many families as well. While, countless farmers had been suffering along for decades, the dust bowl buried them financially. Under those circumstances, many homes were foreclosed on, leaving families with few choices. Consequently, for farmers the only comprehensible answer was to move, generally to California. “Handbills, or flyers, advertised the abundance of jobs and land available in California.
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These occurrences, which were chronicled in John Steinbeck’s, “The Grapes of Wrath”, showed a considerably altered outcome of this decision than found in his earlier work, “Of Mice and Men”. While “Of Mice and Men”, demonstrated a result in which George and Lennie were able to move around and find work, “The Grapes of Wrath”, told a different story. “The Dust Bowl had drawn more than 300,000 refugees to California during the 1930s. Although California farming required more labor, and therefore more people, there simply were not enough jobs available for the number of people migrating into the state. The Joads arrived in California to find that jobs were not plentiful and that opportunity was scarce. Their dream of laboring for a few months to scrape the money together to buy their own piece of land quickly fizzled away,” (San Jose State University, 2015). Though the focus of the Dust Bowl is often the plight of the migrant workers, in both the photos by Dorthea Lange and “The Grapes of Wrath,” we examine further than just the difficulties of the migrant workers. Conversely, we instead delve deeper into the troubles of the American family and their great effort to survive during the trails and tribulations presented by the dust bowl and their migration to California in hopes of finding a brighter
These occurrences, which were chronicled in John Steinbeck’s, “The Grapes of Wrath”, showed a considerably altered outcome of this decision than found in his earlier work, “Of Mice and Men”. While “Of Mice and Men”, demonstrated a result in which George and Lennie were able to move around and find work, “The Grapes of Wrath”, told a different story. “The Dust Bowl had drawn more than 300,000 refugees to California during the 1930s. Although California farming required more labor, and therefore more people, there simply were not enough jobs available for the number of people migrating into the state. The Joads arrived in California to find that jobs were not plentiful and that opportunity was scarce. Their dream of laboring for a few months to scrape the money together to buy their own piece of land quickly fizzled away,” (San Jose State University, 2015). Though the focus of the Dust Bowl is often the plight of the migrant workers, in both the photos by Dorthea Lange and “The Grapes of Wrath,” we examine further than just the difficulties of the migrant workers. Conversely, we instead delve deeper into the troubles of the American family and their great effort to survive during the trails and tribulations presented by the dust bowl and their migration to California in hopes of finding a brighter