Poverty In The Dust Bowl

Poverty was widespread during the Dust Bowl. In the USA, the proportion of the human workforce in agriculture had decreased from almost half the workforce (41%) in 1900 to less than a quarter (21%). (United States Department of Agriculture, 2005). Unsurprisingly, this improvement in technology caused many people to be displaced and in turn become unemployed. At the peak of the Great Depression in 1933, it was estimated that on average 12,830,000 people were made unemployed, almost one quarter of the entire labour force in the USA. In March of that year, 15 and a half million were unemployed which was the worst month for unemployment ever in the United States (Bernstein). In Orwell’s period of writing, conditions of poverty were also similar.
A homodiegetic narrator is defined as a narrative viewpoint from the first-person perspective. The prominent feature of the homodiegetic narrative is the use of the first person pronoun such as ‘I’ which anchors the narrative to a particular psychological viewpoint. (Giovanelli, 2012). On the other hand, a heterodiegetic narrator is a narrator who is outside the events of the story and has the viewpoint from a third-person perspective. However, an internal heterodiegetic narrator holds a much more privileged position as they are able to offer the reader insight into a character’s thoughts. They may be referred to as omniscient as they are able to ‘weave into and out of different character’s minds and to some extent control readers’ sympathies and reactions to them’. (Giovanelli, 2012). There are also varying degrees of omniscience which in this case is partial omniscience when access is given to the internal thoughts of only some selected characters. By doing so, the author selects the characters which seem most likely to reveal the implications and the impact of a particular story. (Parker, 1970). This in turn can make the readers form a ‘closer bond’ with characters whose thoughts are revealed. At the same time, it can make the characters who are not explored internally, seem more distant to
The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1937) by rhetorician I. A. Richards describes a metaphor as having three parts: the tenor, vehicle and the ground. The tenor is the subject to which attributes are ascribed. The vehicle is the object whose attributes are borrowed. The ground is the similarity between the two ideas. The interaction between the different parts of the metaphor contribute greatly to the effect and understanding of it. There are also different types of metaphors which reflect different writers’ purposes. In this case, this investigation aims to explore submerged metaphors and classical metaphors. On the one hand, a submerged metaphor is defined as an implied comparison made in one or two words (usually verbs, nouns, adjectives). (Nordquist, 2017). On the other hand, (Leading Questions, 1992) defines a classical metaphor as one which serves to illustrate thought and is unambiguous. These metaphors are often used for simple and logical presentation of everyday