Chapters 3-6 Economic and Political Pressures

The banks are similar to tyrants, because they push the farmers around. The banks are not able to make profits so they have been kicking people off their land, leaving them with no place to go. In many ways the farmers have become the oppressed people during the days and months of the dust bowl.  They are forced to try and survive with little other than what they can carry on their back. With no home and not work, life is hard and to many hopeless. The farmers try to fight the banks, and keep their land but it is a hopeless cause. The banks come in with bulldozers and flatten any buildings. Do to all the hardship, people will just about anything to make money. In turn the farms have turned angst one another, and are working for the banks, removing and destroying, neighbors’ farms. Farmers try and justify these actions with the mindset if not you then me, but in time every one is going to lose it all. I can only image what it would be like to have to choose between getting paid to push my neighbor of his land in order to make money to survive. I think I could allow my self to do soothing like the guilt would just seem to hard to deal with. You never know hardships change people. I would hope I am strong enough to not let my values be put a side because times are hard. When things turn for the worst many people don’t know how to stop it or make it easier, some give up all together, others try and resist the change and few actual try and learn from the situation. If the farmers had tried to support one another things could have been different, but it’s very hard to do when the natural instinct of fight or flight sets in, which is exactly what happens to these farmers.