The Great Depression Theme Analysis

“Hello, ma’am. My name is Deza Malone and my brother made a mistake and took a pie from someone and we were going to return it but I found out at the last minute that half of the pie had got chewed on by a dog. Jimmie cut all the doggy parts off of the pie and wiped the dog’s spit from the rest. It’s the most beautiful pie I’ve ever seen and I thought it would be a shame to throw it away. I was wondering if you and your kids might like to have it instead?”

I took the dishrag off and the woman said, “Now, that’s a pie! Sweetheart, thank you very much! We’d love to have it!”

She laughed. “A little dog slob could never ruin a fine pie like this. Besides, do you know how many times we’ve had to fight dogs off something we were gonna eat?”

“Smile, kiddo,” the bad brain said. “Get as close as we can.”

Clarice had covered her mouth with both hands. It was easy to see that she was grief-struck that something this terrible could happen on the next-to-last day of school.

“Okay, kiddo, when she hands the paper to you, snatch her arm! We’ll get two or three bites in before she can slap us off or call for help!”

[…]

I held my breath, giving her one last chance to say, “Dear me, Miss Malone, I’m so sorry, I’ve made a terrible mistake, I should have called Clarice.”

Mrs. Needham looked right in my eyes, held my essay out and said, “Very good job, Deza.”

Very good job?

Was she playing a joke on me? I looked at what was written in red on the top of my paper. There was a big “A-” sitting there!

Father said, “That’s what we’re hoping for, Jimmie. Joe knows he’s got to win this fight, he knows how important it is, he’ll come through.

“Some of the time life boils down to some pretty ridiculous things, Deza. This is one of them. I agree, it’s silly to put so much importance on one fight, but you have to keep in mind that this fight is the one chance we have to show the Nazis, we are people too. It’s ironic, but Joe will show we’re human by savagely beating the stuffing out of someone.”

I would have believed anything my father was saying because it was in his own strong voice. I was going to have faith in Father’s word. I was going to try to make a light come on for Clarice, because the more I thought about it the madder I got at myself for not seeing this on my own.

“Why are you taking this so personal? You have nothing to be ashamed of, Roscoe. No one has work, no one has food.”

Father said, “Maybe you’re right, maybe it’s not shame. Maybe it’s fear. Maybe I’m afraid that one day I’ll come in here and see the love and concern on all of your faces, see the way you and the kids work so hard to make me feel better, and I’ll lose my mind. I’ll be so hurt, so angry, so desperate that I’ll go out in the streets and do something horrible. Something to get food or coal or clothes, something that would allow me to feed my family, something that would allow me to feel like a human being and not some animal in a zoo waiting for a handout.”

If I ever found that Dewey decimal system for superstitious sayings and looked up “Bad news comes in threes,” I would’ve seen that for the Malones, it meant three times every hour.

At supper, Jimmie asked what kind of truck we were going to use to move.

Mother said, “Children, give me your hands.”

A not-so-good sign.

“Jimmie, Deza, there isn’t going to be a moving truck, we won’t need one.”

My heart flew! “Oh, Mother! I knew it! We aren’t moving!”

“Yes, Deza, we are. We just won’t need a truck to do it. Most of this furniture…” She looked around. “Who am I kidding? None of this furniture is ours.”

Mother said to Miss Carter, “Julia, isn’t this terribly unsafe?”

“Shoot, girl, Yeah, it’s all unsafe. You gonna have to be extra careful when you get to camp, that’s unsafe too, if you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s just like anything else, there’s just enough bad folks in camp to make it so you got to keep your guard up at all times. It’s especially hard on women, and even worse for little girls.”

She looked at me and a shiver went through my heart. “You just gotta keep your wits about you and don’t let no one in on your business. Keep it to yourself why you’re on the road alone.”

Mother’s 1-1-1 lines jumped out.

“Always let folks think your husband or your brother is with you, always tell ’em that he’s gonna be back later tonight. There’s strength in numbers.”

I hadn’t understood what the hobo with the beautiful beard had meant when he said we were fresh, but now I got it.

There weren’t a lot of them, but all the fresh ones, young and old, had a certain look, a expression that anyone who’s been on the road for a while has had scrubbed off their faces.

It wasn’t like they were worried or feeling sorry for themselves, they had a look of surprise, like they couldn’t believe what had happened. You can’t know the feeling unless you’ve had it.

One day you’re living in your own home, and then it seems like with no warning, the next day you’re carrying everything you own in a blanket or a sack or a ratty suitcase while being shooed from one place to another like a fly.