Studs Terkel provides his readers with reflections, images, and memories of the Great Depression told by those who were both directly and indirectly connected to it. It is not a book of documented facts, rather it is a personal collection of impressions and stories that present on overall impression of the times. With the rich detail of human experiences, the book is filled with recounts from men and women who rode the rails to college students to wealthy family members.
The book seems to span two generations and three levels of familiarity with the events: first, those who directly experienced hardship during the Depression (Level 1); second, those whose parents were mostly affected, yet they were indirectly influenced as children (Level 2); and the third, those who were somewhat untouched by the events (Level 3). Because the stories are not arranged in these levels but by social status or situation, we can see similarities in experience among backgrounds as well as across generations.
The people in Level 1 talk about the Depression using concrete examples. Because they are retelling events as they happened, the reader must infer the emotional content of the stories. Although it is easier to hear the voice in these accounts, it is less obvious to know how the people felt. There is a sense of hurt, abandonment, despair, and of pride in survival, but generally, these feelings are never expressed in such terms. They seem to be organizing the story as they speak and, in some cases, summarizing their sentiments only in the end.
I never did get a whole year of school--maybe five six months. I started workin' when I was thirteen. In a sawmill at ten cents and hour·.I finally got 25 cents an hour, but he raised the board to seventy-five cents a day (237). -Aaron Barkham, at the time , a 35 year-old miner.
We come to a little town in Nebraska, Beatrice. It's morning. I'm chilled to the bone. We crawl into a railroad sandbox, almost frozen to death. We dry out, get warmed up, and make the train again·.No, I don't see the Depression as an ennobling experience. Survivors are still ridin' with the ghost--the ghost of those days when things came hard (44-50). -Ed Paulsen, at the time, 14 years old.
One man was able to generalize about people's
emotions, most likely because of his job as a psychiatrist:
The complaints then were more concrete. The
poor wanted food, clothing, and sheer necessities of life. Today the demand
is for egalitarian status. Thirty years ago, the patients' complaint was
familiar. Today, the common complaint is much more vague: unhappy, anguish
in their aloneness. They don't know where they belong·Feeling lonely, unappreciated
and alienated was no basis for going to a psychiatrist in those days (230).
- Dr. Nathan Ackerman, psychiatrist
In Level 2, people who, because they were children being protected by their parents, seem to speculate about emotions, but basically, seem slightly uncertain about the events. Yet after many years, they have been able to make observations about how it affected them.
This may sound impossible, but if there's one thing that started me thinking, it was President Roosevelt's cuff links. I read in the paper how many pair of cuff links he had. And I'll never forget, I was sitting on an old tire out in the front yard and we were poor and hungry·.And I was wondering why it is that one man could have all those cuff links when we couldn't even have enough to eat·.That's the first time I remember ever wondering why (67). - Peggy Terry
They would sit around and tell us their hard luck story. Whether it was true or not, we never questioned it. It's very important you learn people as they are. At that particular moment when you are talkin' to that person, maybe that's how that person were. Tomorrow they can be different people. It's important to see people as people and no try to see them through a book. Experience and age give you this (61). -Emma Tiller, a cook in Western Texas
It wasn't until years later, I realized the fear people had of these [hungry] men (51). - Pauline Kael, film critic
In the third level, people, for different reasons, have remained unaffected by the events of the thirties. Despite their lack of knowledge about the daily events during the Depression, they seem the most able to hypothesize about its repercussions at the time and its significance many years later.
The Depression is something I don't think about. I guess I should. It's been no part of my experience·.Fear. It unsettled the securities, apparently false securities that people had. People haven't felt unfearful since. Fear of the Communists, fear of people living in sin, fear of the hippies--fear, fear, fear. I think people learned it from the Depression (43). - Marshall 23, editor for an underground newspaper
It's something that has been filtered down through my parents. I didn't know much about it, and they don't mind my not knowing much about it. They control the source of information·They want to keep it a secret. They say, 'You have it soft now.' The point is, they have it soft now. They sort of feel guilty about it. If they make other people feel guilty about it, it won't be so noticeable in their own instances (41). - Tad, 20
My grandmother'd tell us things about the Depression. You can read about it, too. What they'd tell us different than what you read. - Lily, 18 years old, from a lower-middle class family
Whether this book is read for how people felt or events of the Depression, it can provide, as Lily said, an account different from those found in any history book. Somehow, reading about the Depression as a personal account rather than a historical and economic event allows us insight into the ways people remember, as well as into their introspective learning processes. Studs Terkel offers us not a book about history, but a book about truth.