The Novel

Historical Significance The use of a specific time period in historical fiction, in which the actions of the characters are motivated by the influences of the time period

Static character A character who does not grow or change throughout the course of a story or novel

Dynamic Character A character who grows and changes throughout the course of a story or novel

Complex Character A character who is multi-faceted and seems like a real person

Flashback A dramatic way for an author to present or provide background information

Foreshadowing A way of giving hints of what is to come in the story

Characterization The method the author uses to create believable characters

Direct Characterization The author literally tells the audience/reader what a character is like. This may be done via the narrator, another character or by the character him- or herself.

Indirect Characterization The audience/reader must infer for themselves what the character is like through the character’s thoughts, actions, speech (choice of words, way of talking), looks and interaction with other characters, including other characters’ reactions to that particular person.

4 domains of Characterization Words, thoughts and actions of the character Description (appearance and background) What other characters say about the character The way other characters react to the character

The Great Depression The stock market crash in the waning days of October 1929 heralded the beginning of the worst economic depression in U.S. history. The Great Depression hit the South, including Alabama, harder than some other regions of the country, and in fact only worsened an economic downturn that had begun in the state a decade earlier

The South’s Economy in the 1920s Much of the nation was enjoying a manufacturing and production boom in the 1920s, when the price of cotton began to fall in the south.cotton By the mid-1920s, over-farming had ravaged southern cotton fields and robbed many small farmers of any prospect of making a living. Some abandoned their farms and moved to cities or out of the state.

The depression's immediate impact on the South was much like that throughout the nation as a whole. Bank failures were common, and in small towns and communities opportunities for loans dried up. Small business owners were especially vulnerable. Less money in local circulation meant fewer paying customers; with the absence of credit and financing, these business owners quickly went under. Large landowners were usually able to ride the depression out; a small number of farmers who made the transition from cotton production to soybeans, peanuts, corn, livestock, and hogs had resources to fall back on. For the rest of southern farmers (69 percent of the population was rural in 1930), the depression was a catastrophe.

Others forced off their land by foreclosure became sharecroppers on terms dictated by large landowners. On the eve of the Great Depression about two-thirds of farm land in the state was operated by sharecroppers. The majority were poor whites who lived on an annual per capita income of less than $200. Conditions were harsher for blacks, whose entanglement in the sharecropping system dated back to Reconstruction

Bell Hooks: Southern blacks were the victims of classism that existed within the white race. Poor whites who were rejected by wealthy whites, took their anger out on the only group to whom they felt superior. Black children feared poor whites more than other whites because they were blatant and cruel about their hatred for them. While rich whites found the actions of the poor whites despicable, they were reluctant to speak out fearing they would be viewed as favoring blacks over their own race. Such support would threaten white supremacy.

Cash-crop production placed enormous pressure on farmers to plant every available acre of land with cotton, which eventually depleted the soil. Outmoded and careless practices, such as intertilling and the plowing of furrows without respect to the land's contour, further drained topsoil, leaving the land gashed and gullied. Making matters worse, the removal of much of the state's natural forestland eliminated one of nature's most effective barriers to erosion. Georgia's land, economy, and farmers were already wearing out when the Great Depression began.

First, the state experienced its worst drought on record in As the depression wore on, the defects and negative trends of cash-crop agriculture became magnified. The typical southern farm family had no electricity, no running water, and no indoor privies.

Diets were inadequate, consisting mainly of molasses, fatback, and cornbread.

The poverty of the state's most rural counties made the support of even minimal education standards impossible. There were few rural clinics, hospitals, or health care workers. Some counties had no health facilities at all. Naturally, sicknesses occurred, with pellagra, tuberculosis, and malaria being common

African Americans were condemned by Jim Crow before the depression to inferior levels of education and the lowest-paying menial jobs, blacks were blocked from participating in the state's political system. The income of rural blacks was about half that of rural whites. According to the 1930 U.S. census, there were only 10% of professionals in the South were black, the majority being clergymen and teachers. Hospitals for blacks existed only in the largest urban areas. The Great Depression slowed the black migratory stream north but did not stop it entirely.