Hello
again! I have to admit, reading these past few weeks have been rough. I finally got the courage to read a historic
nonfiction book but I found myself deeply lost and re-reading the pages over
and over again. I originally started reading a book about the role of women in
World War II but I couldn't get myself to finish the book so I ended up
abandoning it. Then, I began to hunt for a new historic nonfiction book that I
would be able to enjoy. One of my classmates, June, had told me that books
about the Dust bowl are usually very interesting so I found a book upon that
topic, which is why I'm currently reading a historic non-fiction book called, The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan
about the Great Depression leading up to the Dust Bowl. I choose to read this book because I never really studied the depression or Dust bowl. I thought this book would give me a chance to fully understand the devastating effects. I've read 230 pages of this book for the past three weeks in class for 20 minutes every other day while reading around 50 minutes at home.
Money has become the measurement of our lives. It plays a significant factor in making our world go “round.” Imagine if banks shut down and suddenly people had no access to their money; Everyone would go insane and the US economy would collapse. Let’s take this exact same situation to the 1930’s. The Great Depression was an international economic decline that deeply affected the lives of Americans. As stock markets crashed, banks failed, and “ twelve million were without jobs, 25 percent of the work force,…[were] thrown off payrolls…with no prospects and no safety net”(Egan 95). This was a time when people had "been without a purpose, direction,[and] or money"(Egan 96). Everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong. People weren't prepared, but how could anyone be prepared for such a cause? Soon after, a drought hit the Great Plains and caused high winds of dust to trample the lives of many. The Dust Bowl "lifted roofs from barns, knocked down warehouse walls,[and] pushed houses from their foundations" (Egan 196). People were forced into a desperate situation of life or death. Over 100 million acres of farmland were ruined and abandoned by many farmers. How could two disastrous events coincide back to back? People living their daily lives were faced with a trial beyond their control. How does one cope with things that are inevitable? When things like this happen, what is it that helps humans to manage suffering? I believe the answer is hope. All mankind operates in hope. That is why we endure through the dreaded Mondays because Friday is coming! We endure through the pain today hoping for a less painful tomorrow. We work diligently throughout our teen years in hopes that we can accumulate enough for our future. Through hope, we continue to live for a better tomorrow.
Relating to the idea of hope, in the 1950's, a professor named Curt Richer conducted a gruesome experiment on rats. He would fill up these jars with water and watch rats drown in order "to measure the amount of time the rats swam before they gave up and [drowned]." One of the rats he tested swam around for 2 minutes and eventually gave up and fell to its death. Richer then modified his experiment by taking the rats into the water but would pick them up just before they were presumed to die. In this way, "the rats quickly learned that the situation isn't actually hopeless." This small act of hope for the rats allowed them to find a reason to keep on swimming. The rats realized that they weren't destined to death but rather they had gained a sense of support. After the modification of the experiment, the rats never gave up or died. Due to the fact that their situation wasn't doomed anymore, they continued to keep on swimming. Just like us, humans, we countinue to face trials becasue there is a sense of optimism we gain. Although, I'm not trying to convey that we're alike rats but "we all need a reason to keep on swimming."
The Great American Dust Bowl, Mariner Books, 2013
Hallinan T. Jospeh. "The Remarkable Power of Hope" Psychology Today, 7 May 2014.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/kidding-ourselves/201405/the-remarkable-power-hope. Acessed 12, November 2017
"Finding Nemo Just keep Swimming." YouTube, uploaded by Walt Disney Studios, Malaysia 24, September 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Hkn-LSh7es
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ReplyDeleteI found this blog to be very interesting and informative at the same time. I had no idea about the dust bowl before reading this blog, but it seems highly important and crucial to the history of America. I cannot believe people had to deal with so much tragedy in their life, which is highly upsetting. Your blog impressed me because I think you embedded some very important quotes that helped to reinforce the main points of the book. I also think that it was very clever of you to choose a saying like "just keep swimming" that most people of our age are familiar with. It was an awesome connection that helped to illustrate your blog perfectly. I am now curious to know whether there could have been a better way for Curt Richer to express his point, while also preserving the lives of innocent rats. I am also curious to know what people did in response to the drastic effects of the Dust Bowl and how they adapted to the horrible conditions of the time. For example, where did people go if their house was destroyed?
ReplyDeleteHey Jaemin! Let me start out by saying I loved how you used Dory's popular say "just keep swimming" (I'm a big fan of disney). I think your inclusion of disney connected your audience to the Dust bowl a little more, understanding Marlins helpless state with those from our ancestors helped me sympathize. I found the lab experiment you included really interesting and I liked how connected the theme of hope from the book to the outside source. In all I loved reading your blog! Now I am just curious about what happened after these effects, what did the rest of the world do, and how did we break out of this depression.
ReplyDeleteI like your final paragraph because I like the context you used to describe what hope meant, even to other species such as rats, so that was a good job of relating to your overall thesis. It is interesting how we all have hope, even in the worst situations and the Great Depression and Dust Bowl combination is a great point in US history to find hope in the worst situations. If people can get through the worst market crash in US history and mass job loss, then what's stopping us from getting from Monday to Friday?
ReplyDeleteOK, there's one sentence where you basically parallel high school to surviving the Dust Bowl. I suppose it can feel that exhausting and overwhelming. :) But I'm glad you're willing to "Just Keep Swimming" like Dory and like those poor little rats. There's always a break in sight, and ultimately, there's a bright future ahead.
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