How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
The woman said […] "I know you don't understand what it means, but there's a depression going on all over this country. People can't find jobs and these are very, very difficult times for everybody. We've been lucky enough to find two wonderful families who've opened their doors for you. […]" (1.13)
It does seem lucky that some foster homes will take the orphans, but Bud doesn't look forward to it. Does the Depression make it worse for Bud to enter a new house? Do his foster parents expect different things from him than they would if there weren't a Depression going on?
Quote #2
The way there're more and more kids coming into the Home every day, I had to make sure no one had run off with any of my things. (1.33)
So, why is it that so many kids are becoming orphans during the Depression? Is it because their parents can't afford to feed them? Or because their parents have died? Or because their parents are moving away to find work? There could be a lot of reasons, but the main point is that things are so bad that a lot of kids are losing their parents and their homes, often at very young ages.
Quote #3
I walked over to the sink and turned on one of the spigots. These Amoses had hot water running right into the house! (4.18)
We all take for granted how good we have it now. Even though we don't know what the Amoses do for a living, we do know they must be fairly well off. Still, running water had been around for a long time by the 1930s, so the fact that Bud is so shocked to see it in the Amos house shows us how poor Bud has been for most of his life.
Quote #4
There were still people lined up waiting. I started walking along the line. The end was a lot farther away than I thought. The line turned all the way around two corners, then crossed over one street before I saw the last person. (6.3)
People waiting in line to get free meals at the local mission were a frequent sight during the Depression (take a peek at our "Best of the Web" section to check out a photo). It could take a really long time to get something to eat, if you were able to get food at all. This shows how desperate people were, and it also shows what kinds of odds Bud is up against in his search for a better life.
Quote #5
Writ about their car in fancy letters it said, THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE AMERICA TODAY! (6.32)
The contrast between all the starving, poor black people standing in line at the mission and the billboard above them with the rich, white family trying to convince people that things are not as bad as they seem is a good example of irony. The point is that life isn't as great as the billboard wants people to believe. Some people may be lucky, but most are suffering, and a lot of people are suffering so much they're standing in line for hours for food.
Quote #6
It was a bunch of huts and shacks throwed together out of pieces of boxes and wood and cloth. The Amoses' shed would have looked like a real fancy house here. (8.33)
"Hoovervilles" were shanty towns full of the poorest homeless people during the Depression trying to scrape together a place to live. People were so poor, that Bud is seeing how "good" he had it in that shed. If that isn't depressing, we don't know what is.
Quote #7
"You're lucky," she said, "it's muskrat stew and there's plenty left over tonight, eat as much as you can." The stew was made out of dandelion greens and a couple of potatoes and some small wild carrots and some crawdads and a couple of little chunks of meat. (8.92)
Mmm, mmm, good. Muskrat. Tastes like chicken, right? Living off the land means foraging for whatever you can find to eat. Even though this doesn't sound like a very appetizing soup, it's fairly nutritious for a free meal. To Bud and Bugs, this is a feast because they get to eat so much of it.
Quote #8
My new clothes were just a little bit too big, but they were long pants and not knickers so I didn't care […] Man, my first pair of trousers! (11.114)
Often, younger kids wore short pants called knickers but had a pair of long pants, or trousers, for cold weather. We wonder if Bud was too poor to ever have a pair of longer pants. Maybe he just wore the same short pair of pants all the time. In any case, this is his first pair of long pants—at ten years old.
Quote #9
Mr. Jimmy ordered a supper that was all the way different from mine and Steady Eddie ordered one that was all the way different from his! No wonder you hear about rich folks going to restaurants once a week, this was great! (14.65)
Nowadays, eating out at restaurants is something most people do, and most people aren't rich. Things have changed a lot since the 1930s. This is so unusual for Bud that he doesn't even understand that it's possible for people to order different dishes depending on what they want. This is a lot of steps of from muskrat stew, right?
Quote #10
I held the mop so that it was floating on the top of the water in the bucket. I was pretending it was that underwater boat in the book momma used to read to me, Twenty Thousand Leaks Under the Sea. (17.1)
Did you notice that in this book, neither Bud nor any of the other kids has any toys? They have to use their imaginations when they play, because toys are expensive, and they're not necessities. (And it is pretty cute that Bud says "leaks" instead of "leagues," right?)