Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Horror and desperation

What were the most heart-wrenching descriptions or moments for you?
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3 comments:

Ben said...

As I said in my earlier post, the grasshopper plague was very sad, because the people were just beginning to hope for the future again.

Black Sunday was horrifying, and it was so sad that everyone had celebrated the clean air that morning, which meant that their houses were unsealed when the storm hit. And the funeral procession getting caught in the storm was really sad.

And the children and babies (and adults) dying of dust pneumonia was awful.

And it was sad that the farmers had no way to know that they were destroying the land. They were doing what they were told was good -- by the government, by crop experts -- almost everyone said that they weren't hurting anything, and that "progress" was a positive thing. They had no reason to think that the minority of folks saying the opposite were correct.

And it was sad for the people who knew that it was wrong that no one listened to them.

And it is tragic that we lost all that prairie.

11:20 AM, September 01, 2010
Erin said...

I agree that the moments of hope followed by crushing disappointment were some of the hardest.

The descriptions of the animals' suffering were really hard to read, too. Like the cows left out in the dust storms, starving to death, their eyes blinded, gnawing on fenceposts.

And the people driven crazy by the constant dust. Women found wandering the streets in a daze or huddled in the corner crying, "The dust, I can't stand it anymore."

11:00 AM, September 02, 2010
kc said...

I found it horrifying that people were bearing children in that environment. If the adults wanted to stay and eek out a miserable existence on the land, that was their affair, but to bring a fragile baby into that world — only for it to sicken and die of dust pneumonia or malnutrition — that seemed horrendous.

11:38 AM, September 02, 2010

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