Changing attitudes toward charity : the values of depression-era America as reflected in its literature

Poverty in literature;National characteristics - American- in literature;American literature - Themes;motives

Stary, Steven M.Dingledine, Don ;

University of Wisconsin

关键词: Poverty in literature;    National characteristics - American- in literature;    American literature - Themes;    motives;   

Others  :  https://minds.wisconsin.edu/bitstream/handle/1793/60987/Stary%2c_Steven.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: University of Wisconsin

【 摘 要 】

As a time of economic and political crisis, the Great Depression influenced authors who sought to rewrite America;;s underlying mythology of rugged individualism into one ofcooperative or communal sensibility. Through their creative use of narrative technique,the authors examined in this thesis bring their readers into close identification with thecharacters and events they describe. Creating connection between middle-class readersand the destitute subjects of their works, the authors promoted personal and communalsolutions to the effects of the Depression rather than the impersonal and demeaning formsof charity doled out by local governments and private charities. Meridel Le Sueur;;s articles ;;Women on the Breadlines;; ;;Women are Hungry;; and ;;I Was Marching along with Tom Kromer;;s novel Waiting for Nothing, are examined for their narrativetechnique as well as depictions of American attitudes toward charitable giving andtoward those who receive charity. The works of Le Sueur and Kromer are shown as a progression culminating in John Steinbeck;;s The Grapes of Wrath later in the decade. Bythe end of the 1930s significant progress had been made in changing American valuestoward communal sensibility through the work of these authors and the economicprograms of the New Deal, but the shift in attitude would not be completelyaccomplished or enduring.