Exploring Poverty in the Great Depression: The Lester Family’s Struggles

Our story takes place during the Great Depression. The genre of the author’s story is a mix of Southern Gothic and social realism. The focus is the effects of extreme poverty, moral decay, survival, and exploitation. Its tone is grotesque, disturbing, and bleak.

 The story revolves around the Lester family. They are white tenant farmers who are living in severe poverty. Their farm is on a worn-out land that they do not own, and the soil is beyond saving, but they are still holding on. Every decision they make is based on the struggles of hunger, ignorance, and desperation. The family is led by Jeeter Lester, and he is determined to play crops and reclaim his goal or farming. Unfortunately, he lacks his own land, seeds, tools, any financial means, and is unable to follow through with his intended goals. He continuously repeats the same false hopes in a very sad cycle.

 Other characters we meet in this doomed cycle of affairs are Bessie Rice. She marries Dude Lester (Jeeter’s 16-year-old and youngest of the Lester boys) for security and control. She uses religion and financial strength as leverage instead of for faith and affection. Her husband, Dude, is very impulsive and his reckless behavior escalates conflicts and does lead to several destructive outcomes. One of them leads to violence that underscores the family’s instability.

 I am not one for sad storis, but I did enjoy this story. I even finished it sitting for a couple of hours as found myself rooting and hoping that the family would be able to break from its frustrating cycles and find happiness. Mr. Caldwell’s writing is well preserved. He gives us a very accurate snapshot of the hopelessness that was felt during the Great Depression. We the desperation, and its easy to label and damn, but we have to understand under a nuance that this family was a snapshot of how many Americans had to live during this dark time in history.