Woody Guthrie's Song 'This Land Is Your Land'

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The Greater Depression In the world of migrant agricultural workers during the 1930’s, the Great Depression seemed to be the cause of much controversial conditions. One such controversial topic was known as the “American Dream.” It was highly doubted by some who lived in that time period of its legitimacy. One problem of the dream was that to the landowners and rich, the treatment of the poor, or the people taking life day-by-day wasn’t a primary concern. This meant that fighting for their freedoms and rights, was not on the top of their to-do lists. However, to people such as John Steinbeck, Woody Guthrie, and Dorothea Lange, the situation regarding the workers was abominable and needed to be addressed. The migration workers were paid horrible…show more content…
It goes from being gung-ho U.S.A. to “In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people, by the relief office I seen my people; as they stood there hungry, I stood there asking is this land made for you and me?”(Guthrie). A relief office is now considered a significant symbol of the Great Depression. It would now be known as the welfare department. During the Great Depression, there were millions who were in need of financial “relief.” In the lyrics, Guthrie depicts a scene where he says that he sees “his” people by the relief office hungry. He is accusing not just the Great Depression, but the entirety of American government for the overwhelming population of impecunious people in the 1900’s. In both Steinbeck’s novel and Lange’s photograph, the way of life for the thousands of destitute Americans is portrayed in the lives of one or two. The woman in Lange’s photograph, Florence Owens Thompson, depicts a deeper demon of a halved family in search for better lives during a time that would later be looked upon as one of the longest and hardest recessions of all time. She is the face of the million migration workers in search for their own American Dream. They all traveled to California in search of a better life, and instead they got hunger, extreme poverty, and an insane amount of discrimination. Of Mice and Men focused on two men who traveled around the nation in search for work with as little as ten dollars between the two of them. They dealt with discrimination and complications every
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