Between 1932 and 1939 the Great Plains of the United States was struck with a series of devastating dust storms. On April 15, 1935, Robert Geiger, a reporter for the associated press, coined the term "Dust Bowl" to describe the continuous storms on the southern Great Plains (Dust Bowl 1931-1939" 1). These dust storms caused the loss of almost 850 million tons of topsoil over 4.3 m on acres (“Dust Bowl 1931-1939” 4). By the mid-1930s, many farmers and their families had lost their crops, livestock,and homes. Families living in places like Kansas and Colorado were largely affected they could not grow their crops due to the loss of topsoil and the sixty miles per hour winds bringing thick dust clouds many were forced to seek shelter and wear …show more content…
They were no longer able to grow the crops they needed and that resulted in a loss of income and not being able to pay the banks. These storms forced many families to change their everyday lives. In The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck describes the families and the ways they had to protect their homes saying, "Now the dust was mixed with the air, an emulsion of dust and air. Houses were shut tight, and cloth wedged around doors and windows, but the dust came in." (Steinbeck 3). This shows how the lives of families revolved around protecting themselves and their homes from the dust and dust …show more content…
The dust storms changed they way the families lived because they were forced to change their everyday habits and activities they used to do for example they could not even go outside without wearing cloth over their faces for protection. Using his characters in the novel Steinbeck illustrates the dust storms when he says “Joad, hurrying, raised a cloud of dust about his knees.” (Steinbeck 71) . Steinbeck shows how much dust there was because Tom Joad is simply walking to his family, he hurries his pace and now there is a cloud of dust all of the way up to his knees. Imagine what plowing a field or even wind could do to unsettle that dust. This explains how it changed their lives because if just doing a simple activity like running could create clouds of dust then they would have had to limit the things they could do as to not start their own dust storms. But the dust storms were the only one of the many factors influencing the change in America during the