John Steinbeck

William Faulkner

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Ernest Hemingway

John Dos Passos

Literature of the 1930s came in many different forms. There were stage plays, comics, poetry, and, of course, novels. Many of these works were brought about through President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs that encouraged those without work to write. Some works from this mass production of literature went on to become great works that the country would read for years to come while other faded slowly in to the shadows.

Some of the writers of the 1930s were better known in the Twenties. F.Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos are three such authors. These three men had left the United States for Europe during the 1920s because they felt that they could not work in the hubbub that was going on back home. As the 1930s rolled around, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Dos Passos, along with other displaced American authors, began returning to the United States because of a shortage of money. In the case of F. Scott Fitzgerald, his 1930s works, such as Tender is the Night (1936), did not become appreciated until after his death. This could have been due to the fact that the people living during the 1930s did not want to read about flamboyant parties and the easy life while they were facing the hard times of the Depression. Hemingway, on the other hand, began to realize what was going on around him and wrote about the social issues of the times. To Have and Have Not is an example of one of his Depression-era novels.

Other writers of the 1930s also focused on the issues of the times. John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath is a well known novel of the 1930s. Steinbeck portrayed the life of the Joad family, forced from their land by the bank and how they travel to California in search of work. Unfortunately everything that the Joad family encounters on their journey leaves them in worse shape than when they started. For them, everything is a downward spiral. Many people of the 1930s, however, were able to relate to the problems that the Joads went through because hard times had hit them just as hard and almost everyone was struggling to make ends meet.

Comics

Every day millions of people across the United States enjoy the comic strip Blondie. What these people may not know is that Blondie is around sixty years old. This comic strip was set to portray a decent but lazy husband; a hard working wife; and the boss who is a "tightwad" when it comes to giving raises to his few deserving workers. This theme is still portrayed in the comic strip today, but in a little more modern format. Other comics from the 1930s also contained issues of the decade, but instead of putting them point blank, they sugarcoated them with humor. In essence, comics gave the people a chance to laugh off some of their stress and strain of the times by seeing fictionalized characters living similar lives but in a lighter manner.

Dreams, Freud, and Literature of the 1930's and Comics of the 1930s and 1940s also links to other comics sites