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Analysis of the Great Depression In a world where every day is worse than previous, Jim Bradford manages to prevail and also inspire his community with his rags-to-riches career; which ended up awarding him the nickname ‘Cinderella Man’. This essay will talk about how many people in the great depression lived in poverty, how they coped by food rationing and through it all the persevered with the help of faith. The movie, Cinderella Man vividly describes life in the Great Depression; Cinderella Man gives us a picture of the suffering of ordinary Americans.
We see unemployed men who are desperate for work, homeless camping out in Central Park and people lining up for free food. At first the Bravado’s are living in modest conditions with Jimmy occasionally taking up a fight for some extra money. Then Bradford breaks his right hand and begins to lose some matches so badly his license is taken away. These factors combined with the increasing price of gas and milk descend his family into grim poverty in the early days of the Depression. A scene in the movie after the family had moved into a smaller apartment shows the ever increasing pile of bills and past dues.
Poverty hits any of the ordinary citizens hard, often unemployment and raised amounts of debts and bills threaten to turn many Americans onto the streets. Many families found themselves in a food crisis. The price of milk for many seemed unaffordable and out of reach because of low income, so most families turned to food rationing. A particularly moving scene in the movie was when Jimmy gives his portion of meat, however scarce to his daughter for her to have a fuller tummy. Also, an important thing was to find ways for food to last longer. Mae, Jimmy’s wife waters down the milk so that it could feed more people for less money in the film.
The Bradford family found honest ways of surviving, however many resorted to less moral ways such as stealing. Throughout the entire film, Jimmy never wavers in his faith. Even when times seemed impossible, the community got together at church to pray for a better outcome. At the end of the movie, when Mae cannot stand to watch her husband supposedly going to his death she rushes to the church to find solitude with God. She is happily surprised to find a church full of people gathered to pray for her husband. She is touched to see how many people that he has inspired to fight back poverty and to show that you should never give up.
Cinderella was a servant turned princess that overcame the barriers poverty with the help of love, Jimmy was a man who persevered through the tough times and won the hardest match when all the odds were against him. The film paints a full-length portrait of a good man coping through the hardest of times in North America, yet it still manages to bring the viewer’s eye to his good traits and how he kept his integrity throughout the entire film. Jimmy Bradford overcame poverty and fought his way through the denial of the people around him that thought he was not good enough. He inspired many to not waver in