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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Why did Martin DeVries hate Roosevelt?

2. Why does Robin Langston think his family was unaffected by the Depression?

3. How many people does Terkel Interview in this introduction?

4. Why did Win Stracke lose his work as a balladeer?

5. What did the Wagner Act outlaw?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why is Jerome Zerbe's interview oddly disturbing?

2. How do interviewees who were young in the 1930's realize something bad happened in the country?

3. What does Phyllis Mortimer do when her family falls on hard times in the 1930's?

4. What connection is made between fear and the Depression in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band?

5. What does Slim Collier's discussion of her father say about the effect unemployment has on men?

6. What does Peggy Terry have to say about race and the Depression?

7. Why was psychoanalysis largely ineffective in the Depression?

8. Describe E.D. Nixon's struggle to unionize sleeping car porters.

9. How was Dr. Lewis Andreas converted to union support in 1937?

10. How was Robin Langston's family affected by the Depression?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Studs Terkel interviews enough people who lived through the Depression that certain archetypes begin to emerge over the course of the book. Write an essay in which you choose an interview that fits each archetype:

Part 1) Choose an interview from an individual who lost wealth in the Depression and discovered a talent at making money through hard work. Where did this person turn to make money? What did he or she discover about society that this person did not know about before? What is this person's worldview after the Depression?

Part 2) Choose an individual who is disappointed by the fact that the country was not largely radicalized by the Depression. To what cultural-political ideology does this person subscribe? What was his or her personal experience during the 1930's? What hope does this person have for the future of America?

Part 3) Choose an individual who lived in a bubble of comfort in the Depression and was not aware of widespread suffering. What was the nature of the bubble in which this person lived? What is his or her impression of the Depression?

Essay Topic 2

The Great Depression was a time during which the most basic and reliable of systems in the United States failed. Though full-on revolution never broke out in America, dissident movements cropped up regularly. Write an essay about three such movements. What issue or injustice gave rise to this spontaneous act of dissidence? How did the movement grow in strength? What happened that finally put an end to the movement?

Part 1) The Bonus March.

Part 2) The opening night of The Cradle Will Rock.

Part 3) The farmers of Iowa stopping corn deliveries.

Essay Topic 3

Write an essay about the Horatio Alger narrative and how the Great Depression forced individuals to reassess the legitimacy of it. Which interviewees in the text subscribed to the strive-and-succeed philosophy of Alger? Did any of them succeed? Of those who failed, what elements in the 1930's work environment proved incompatible with the rags-to-riches mythology? What did these people discover as a new philosophy?

(see the answer keys)

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