Part I: Research
Topic: Mental health during the Great Depression
Summary: During the Great Depression, some of the people who struggled the most with feelings of depression were those who had to police other desperate farmers in order to make money for their families. This text, written in the modern day, describes the memories of a man who worked as a security guard at the railroad during the Depression and was forced to beat trespassers with a wooden club. The people he saw were broken and disheartened, willing to do anything to get a few more dollars. Such conditions too often made law enforcers into sadistic, heartless givers of punishment, though the subject of the text tried to pass along helpful information to those he saw riding the rails instead of beating them up.
Evaluation: In The Grapes of Wrath, many of the characters struggle with feelings of depression and worthlessness; Ma specifically feels as though the family is falling apart and there is no way to fix it. Characters such as the man at the store in the peach farm closely resemble the text's security guard, who needs to get money but identifies strongly with those he is forced to hurt.
Citation:
Richter, Don. "People Broken in Body, Spirit During Depression." Commercial News [Danville] 5 Jan. 2014, Local sec.: n. page. Commercial-News. Commercial News, 5 Jan. 2014. Web. 11 Jan. 2014. <http://www.commercial-news.com/local/x1186904270/People-broken-in-body-spirit-during-Depression>.
Part II: Philosophical Questioning
If you lived during the Great Depression, would you take a job if it meant you would have to hurt others?
How "far" is it ethical to go to take care of your family?
Do you think that being put in a position of power of disadvantage changes the way that a person thinks and behaves? Have you ever been in a situation like this?
Part III: Reflection
The most memorable moment of my discussion with my dad was his answer to the last question I asked. He gave an example of when he was working with his uncle Jack, wh had always be friendly and nice to him-- but when he became his boss, their relationship completely transformed. Jack was much more critical and not as friendly in many ways. I think that this is an important warning of how being in a position of power even for just a short period of time can really change a person's character, and I am not likely to forget it. The most surprising part of the discussion was probably when we talked abut what was ethical to do to take care of your family. My dad brought up the point that form a purely ethical standpoint, you really shouldn't do something for your family that you wouldn't do for other people, because there's no way to know where to draw the line-- it just becomes a complex game of otherization where ultimately those who are different from you are the ones that you don't treat as symapthetically. I had really never thought of this before, and before this conversation I would have said that the most ethical thing to do is to put your family first without thinking twice about it. My dad made me think about what is ethical in terms of relationships with others in a completely different way. However, he also pointed out that family is an important-- some might say crucial-- institution, and part of what holds it together is that family members will treat each other differently from a random stranger. This adds another layer of complexity onto the issue, as ethics is balanced with how to keep civil society as we know it from falling apart. I personally don't think that I have come up with a good answer to this question yet, but I will certainly continue tot try to do so. I though that my questions during this discussion were some of the most thought-provoking that I have had during this assignment. However, the first question was kind of a dead end because it ended up being more of a yes-or-no question than I had envisioned it as. In the future I would make sure to formulate more open-ended questions that I could have a longer and more in-depth discussion about.
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