The Thirties: Great Depression and American Literature

Abstract

American literature in the 1930s was heavily influenced by the era of Great Depression – deep political, economic and financial crisis found variant representations in American prose, poetry and drama. Despite the crisis, writing itself flourished. New plays were staged by Eugene O’Neill, Clifford Odets, Maxwell Anderson, Thornton Wilder and William Saroyan – playwrights whose work is regarded as the nation’s greatest dramatic achievements. The decade is also often described as one of the great ages of the novel, encompassing the best works of John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, John Dos Passos and Zora Neale Hurston among others. Langston Hughes, Muriel Rukeyser, Kenneth Fearing and William Carlos Williams were among those making significant contributions to American poetry.Vitality in literature cannot, however, be related simply to the issues raised by the Depression. The imperatives and impulses which drove Americans to write were as diverse in the 1930s as in any other decade. Focusing on the ways in which matters of radical politics, national identity and ‘escapist’ culture were examined within contemporary literature, this paper discusses how authors were pulled in various directions at once: political radicalism vs escapism; literary modernism and theatricalism vs realism; region vs nation; man vs nature; and nostalgia vs hope for the future. Versatility of the literary landscape reminds us not to reduce the literary 1930s to simplistic notions of the ‘Depression Era’ or the ‘Red Decade’.