The Great Depression and the Life of Italian-Immigrant Workers

Commentary: In order to develop ideas for this paper, I first analyzed the time of the Depression and what Italian Immigrants lives were like typically living in America. Using this background knowledge, I was able to analyze the lifestyles of the working class in each of the stories. Even though the background story of each of the family’s lives differed, they all had a common basis in that they were Italian Immigrant families working a hard lifestyle in order to support the family during economic hardship. I revised this paper by looking to see if my ideas were clearly expressed. I ran into an obstacle of trying to figure out which ideas to express, since the novels …show more content…

This scene shows the intricacies and details of the daily life of people who had a hard life. He gets his pleasure from a tiny little success in his work, when his baking has gone right. These little things mean a lot when you don’t have much. It is the daily routine of these little things and the stories and memories that he can make from these little things that help him deal with the stresses and challenges of the work life. In another scene, Johnny had to work late at night and what we have at the end is that he is so sleepy that he falls asleep on the woman who owns the store, and then ”as his eyes snapped open, Johnny said, ‘I’m wide awake’…” (From the Margins 88). Johnny, is only eleven years old, yet he is still working late into the night to help his father. In today’s time, this is unusual, but during the Great Depression it was necessary for young children in the family to work in order to survive. Giovanni’s family’s job is cakes and that is where they spend the most of their time. The things they do, their work, the food, and the fact that this is what their life is