The 1940s

Ellison wrote "Jeffty Is Five" in the 1970s. This era is discussed below. But while his story was written in the 1970s and the setting of his story is also around the 1970s, the main thrust of his story is a nostalgia for the years of the narrator's childhood, the 1940s. Ellison paints a dreamlike picture of the 1940s, a focus that is taken from a child's point of view, which includes all the fun stuff. But other things were happening during this period. For instance, a world war was fought during the first half of the 1940s. The first atomic bomb was dropped, and Hitler led the Holocaust. Food supplies were rationed, and the House of Un-American Activities Committee, which caused communist paranoia to sweep across America, had just begun. These were also the years when Japanese Americans were sent, en masse, to internment camps...