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Homeless Imagine you are homeless. You have no money, no Job, and, obviously, no home. Every day you wake up, grab your sign, and stand on a corner. Sometimes people stop, but most of the time, cars whiz past you without thinking twice. Now imagine you are homeless, but this time it is during the Depression. How is it different? Do people help you in the same way as they would in today’s society? Our society’s attitudes towards homelessness and poverty are both similar and different than society’s attitudes during the depression.
One of the many similarities the homeless n the present have with the homeless in the ass’s and ass’s is that people are still trying to help out. In The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, the waitress at the diner, Mae, helps the Easies that come in. She gives them bread for 10 cents when it’s actually 15 cents and she also gives them two pieces of candy for 1 penny when they were actually 5 cents apiece. That kind of kindness still exists. You see people on the streets with cardboard signs asking for money or food, and sometimes you see people pull over in their cars and give them what they need.
It’s generous and it’s one hint that has stayed the same throughout time. In the sass’s and ass’s people often took advantage of the homeless and poor. They still do. Car dealers do it a lot. If a homeless or poor person needs a car, they have to buy it at an inflated price, even if the car is old and beat down. The reason the car dealers do this is because they know the poor people need the car so bad that they’ll pay whatever they can for it. Pawn shops are the same way. Just like during the Depression, some people today still have hatred towards the homeless and poor. In My Turn: No Heart for the
Homeless, written in 1986, the writer, Stuart D. Bosky has a lot of hate for the homeless. He states that “They are America’s living nightmare??tattered human bundles. They have got to go. ” That is almost exactly how the Californians felt in The Grapes of Wrath. They did not want them there. One of the quotes from the book says “These goddamned Skies are dirty and ignorant. They’re degenerate, sexual maniacs. These goddamned Skies are thieves. They’ll steal anything. They’ve got no sense of property rights. ” Lots of people have a lot of hate for the homeless today as hey did back then.
In contrast to Stuart D. Bosky, Barbara Lazar Casher sees the homeless as a way to keep us compassionate. In her article On Compassion, she states that “It is impossible to insulate ourselves against what is at our very doorstep. I don’t believe that one is born compassionate. Compassion is not a character trait like a sunny disposition. It must be learned, and it is learned by having adversity at our windows, coming through the gates of our yards, the walls of our towns, adversity that becomes so familiar that we begin to identify and empathic with it.
While Bosky wants the homeless people gone, Casher wants them to stay. She thinks that the more we notice the homeless, the more compassionate we will be, and the more we will help out. One of the great differences that has developed overtime for the homeless and poor, is that more and more people are stepping up and helping out. Homeless: Poverty and Nonprofit Organizations By Eyeballed The government has stepped up by building homeless shelters, soup kitchens, food banks, etc. They also have housing assistance and they created WICK, which helps women, infants, and children.
The government also makes sure that there is no one dying on the streets. It was not like that during the Depression. The migrants, on their way to California, saw many dead people. Many of them had starved to death. Back in the sass’s and ass’s, the majority of the population looked down on the homeless people. They did not want anything to do with them. That has changed over time and more and more people are feeling compassion towards the homeless and poor. They are volunteering and donating to the nonprofit organizations. We’re helping the homeless out and it should stay that way.