Coping With Great Depression: A Nation's Solace
It’s a term that often accompanies discussion of depression – ‘coping mechanism’. It’s the strategy, the fallback, the rope out of what can seem like even the darkest hole. But could any one such thing have really been accessible for an entire nation?
The Great Depression affected every aspect of the average American’s life in the 1930s, and as "individuals, families, and communities faced the painful, frightening, and often bewildering collapse of the economic institutions on which they depended"[1], things must have seemed as though there was little hope in sight. In this exhibit, I want to examine some of the coping methods that emerged in American society, and the different repercussions created by each one. I pinned down three main topics: religion, folklore, and pop culture. I intend to argue that while each resonated for different reasons, all came together as means of escapism for the average American from the strife of the Great Depression.
Sources Used: Dwight, Mabel. “Library of Congress.” Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/99400809/.