With a collection like Hard Times, a reader can notice a distinct sense of date and general patterns. One of the more distinct patterns came from food. Many people mentioned their dislike of particular foods due to the depression. People claim they can't have certain things anymore because of this constant eating of it, like a sardine sandwich. It makes a reader wonder about how these foods affect thinking. Does it bring back bad memories, have they been conditioned by the situation to have a disdain? This kind of dislike and distrust directly came from the depression, and even decades later, lingered with that generation. Without a work like Hard Times, a very personal sense of the depression might have never been accessible to future generations as easily.
Another unique sense comes from the actual time period for these. Hard Times and the oral history fields itself, really dates the material. People mention thing such as the Vietnam War like it happened yesterday. These accounts not only provide information upon the great depression, but also on the time period they were taken in. Hard Times created an excellent account of these very personal stories, allowing them to weave powerful personal narratives even in the shortest amounts of space.
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With so many objects within the oral histories that "date" them, does it detract from the current-day reader's understanding? Someone reading today might find it hard to connect with these first-generation survivors (though easier because of current economic times) due to being to so distant. An optimist would hope that the troubles of 1986 or 1932 would only be a memory in a new millennium.
ReplyDeleteI agree, Terkel really captures the essence of the depression with these histories. And I think the time period that these histories were collected most definitley either influenced the interviewees as well as reflected their perception of that time based on their experiences from the Depression.
ReplyDeleteI also appreciate Hard Times for the way it makes the Depression personal. Food was very much a part of that. Taste and smell are deeply embedded in our memory. We associate certain foods with particular feelings, both positive and negative. Comfort foods come to mind. It also seems like this was the generation that forced their children to clean their plates because they remembered what it was like to go hungry. You also make a good point about the oral histories being dated. The issues of the late sixties were coming through in the oral histories along with the issues of the thirties.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Hard Times dates itself with the interviewees’ references to the crises they were living in. Isn’t it interesting that we essentially get a “two-for-one” deal in this text reading it today? After hearing the clips in class today from Terkel’s other interviews, do you think that this text could use an accompanying CD for the interviews? I think it could be good, especially when the children he interviewed were doing impersonations of their parents during the Depression.
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